About Us
The Stamford Endowed Schools comprises Stamford Junior School (including the Nursery), Stamford High School for girls, and Stamford School for boys. The three Schools together form a diamond structure, with co-educational Junior School learning, single gender classrooms with co-curricular activities between 11 and 16, and a joint SES Sixth Form. Together the Schools have approximately 1600 pupils.
Stamford School was founded in 1532 by William Radcliffe, the alderman of Stamford. He died without issue and left all his money to endow a priest-schoolmaster and to teach grammar in Stamford. An 11th century chapel, a part of St Paul’s Church, was acquired and became the schoolroom. For 339 years, the new School was governed by a private Act of Parliament of 1548/9, then in the 1870s, it fell under a new scheme.
During the nineteenth century, responsibility over the school passed to the Stamford Municipal Charity Trustees. They acted on the suggestion of an investigator from the Schools Inquiry Commission and wrote to the Governors of Browne’s Hospital with a request if they would consider putting forward some surplus revenue towards the School. Some of this money was used to establish a girls’ school. At the time, it was becoming compulsory for children of both genders to receive an education. Stamford High School was founded in the wake of the Elementary Education Act 1876, which decreed that it was the parents’ duty to ensure every child in their family received an efficient education in reading, writing and arithmetic. The girls’ school first opened its doors to 32 girls on 10 May 1877.
Stamford High School was originally intended to serve as a Middle School for girls, but the headmistress, Miss Monro persuaded the Board of Governors to let her establish a Kindergarten; a preparatory class for both boys and girls aged between three and eight years old. As time went by, the numbers of junior school children increased necessitating the need for a separate building. The Governors purchased a house belonging to the Phillips family who owned a local brewery. It was renamed Welland House and became the Junior School. In 1973, a new building was constructed on Kettering Road, and opened in 1975.
These three establishments are scattered throughout the town of Stamford but are overseen by the same Board of Governors. Together, they form the Stamford Endowed Schools, and the history of all three can be found in the SES Archive.