The school was already in existence when the twon accounts start in 1584, and a refrence to the 'old schole' in 1588 and a 1600 reference to timbers being taken from 'the olde Scholehouse into the other schole', point to a new grammar school being built near the old one in the 1580s. E.A.G. Clark, 'Education in Congleton', in W.B. Stephens. ed., History of Congleton (Manchester, 1970), 272-5, 287-9.