Page:The History of CRGS.djvu/17

 of that year. From these facts we may perhaps sketch the course of events between 1539 and 1584 as follows. Presumably the School remained in St. Mary's until 1539 or thereabouts. In 1539 came the grant of the chantries and fresh resources. Perhaps the municipality had felt the need for a reconstitution of the School, or perhaps the impelling motive was the opportunity of seizing the rich chantry lands under the pretext of a zeal for education. Or perhaps the old school had for some reason ceased to exist. This we do not know, but the mention of the Bishop of London in the Letters Patent of 1539 strongly suggests that in fact it was still in existence, and was to be replaced by, or absorbed into, the new. Indeed, perhaps it was the very danger of interference by the Bishop that prompted the municipality to move the School out of his soke to some other part of the town. But to what part? Opportunely Bailiff Christmas owned a house, called Westons, at the far end of the town (the Crouched Friars had once drawn rents from John Weston's tenement in All Saints); what could be more convenient than to place the newly—constituted school in this house? The schoolmaster could be allotted a suitable salary from the town funds, and perhaps Master Christmas was reasonable enough to exact no exorbitant rent for the use of his house.

In any case, the house had already "byn used to be a Grammar Schole-howse" before 1584, but was only then purchased, which suggests some irregularity in the previous arrangement concerning the use of Christmas's house, for Henry's Letters Patent had instructed the town to "erect and maintain" a school.

With minor structural alterations Westons served until the middle of the nineteenth century, when it had so far deteriorated as to be considered irreparable, and in 1853 the Grammar School was moved for the second time in its history, to its present quarters on the Lexden Road. The old school-house was bought in auction by a carriage-manufacturer. Strange as it seems, although the change was made less than a century ago, the identity of Westons was almost "lost," and a genuine doubt has existed in recent years as to which of the buildings in Culver Street occupied the site of the old school, the issue being further confused in October, 1939, when the demolition of All Saints Court and adjacent buildings revealed the timber frame (now erected in the Castle) of what appeared to be the hall of some public building. This, however, was not the School: Westons now[1947] [sic] houses Adams's Garage. The transition from carriage-manufactory to garage is natural enough, and the ground plan of the garage conforms to that of the School as it is shown in a perambulation of All Saints Parish of 1794, despite the very different use to which the building is put (see ). Moreover, when the school-house was sold by public auction (Essex Standard, May 4th, 1853) the premises were described as having a frontage of 79 feet; and Adams's Garage is the only property in that part of Culver Street with that frontage. Little information survives concerning Westons. A brief description in White's Directory (1848) Rh