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Town Trail Point 4

The Jacobean School


Photograph of the former Jacobean school seen from the south
Right - The former Jacobean school
seen from the south

Burton Latimer was one of the first villages to possess a Grammar School.  The school was endowed with £47 per annum arising from 10 acres of land and a house left in 1589 by Margaret Burbank, and an annuity of £7 under a decree of the court of chancery.  Margaret Burbank settled lands to the use of a schoolmaster to teach a free grammar school.  A schoolhouse was conveyed to trustees by deed of 21 June 1588 by William Vaux, Lord Harrowden and George, his son.  An annuity was payable to the schoolmaster out of a farm at Burton Leonard and the school also received the rent of seven cottages, which were formerly the poor house belonging to Scott’s Charity, founded by William and Agnes Scott about 1514.  The school was built in 1622 to teach boys Latin and Greek.  The architecture is comparable with that of Grammar Schools of a similar period at Uppingham, Oundle and Oakham, all of which grew into Public Schools.

Photograph of Jacobean School in 1905
1905 Jacobean School

The school, which was erected in 1622, is situated to the NW of the Church and is a rectangular seventeenth century building of Weldon ragstone.  It consisted of one room measuring 44’ x16’.  It had a fine oak roof of five bays. 


Photograph of inscription above central doorway of former Jacobean School
Inscription above central doorway


The front to the road has four mullioned windows and a good central doorway, above which is a curved gable breaking the roof-line and containing a panel inscribed:

“The Free Schoole was founded

by Thomas Burbanke and

Margaret his wife 1587

Memoria: ivsta. Benedicta. Pro”


Over each of the windows is an inscription as follows:

1.    “Ex dono Johannis Michel

2.     Donum Johannis Bariffe 22

3.     Georgius Plowright me dedit 22

4.     W Carpes citius quam imitabereis. N.”


Note:  The figures and letters at the beginnings and ends of lines are dates and initials ie 1622 twice, and W.N.)


The larger three light end windows have the middle light heightened.  The school commenced as a Free Endowed Grammar School, was known as the Free School in 1849, £25 per annum. (
Click here for The History of Education in Burton Latimer - Part I 1596-1870.)



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