Prescot School

Prescot School is a co-educational comprehensive school in Prescot, Merseyside, England. It was previously called Prescot Grammar School. It was announced in late 2015 by the headteacher, Judy Walker, that the historic name and the link to the school's near-half century of tradition (which had been deprecated between 2009-2015 by the local authority) was being restored as a consequence of a successful application by the school for academy status. The official opening of the reformed school was on the 28th of April.The main historical source is local historian F. A. Bailey's 40 page pamphlet published to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the school in 1944 and reissued in 1971 under the title PGS 1544 - 1971 with postscripts by G. Dixon and the then headmaster, J. C. S. Weekes.HistoryFoundationThe school was founded in 1544 by Gilbert Lathum, a local clergyman who left £140 in his will to fund a schoolmaster to run a free grammar school.The school was first based in Church Street, opposite the Prescot Parish Church of St. Mary's. It then moved in 1760 to a site in High Street, where it remained until 1924. The next move was to the spacious site on St. Helens Road, accommodated in newly built wooden buildings which were originally intended to be temporary, but were expanded and augmented in the 1960s by a brick-built assembly hall, classrooms and purpose-built metalwork and woodwork workshops, and remained in use until 1978 when they fell victim to an arson attack by a disturbed former pupil.