108 Welsh Row, Nantwich

Nantwich Grammar School, later known as Nantwich and Acton Grammar School, is a former grammar school for girls and boys in Nantwich, Cheshire, England. It now forms part of the mixed comprehensive school, Malbank School and Sixth Form College.

The original Nantwich Grammar School was first recorded in 1572 and occupied a schoolhouse in St Mary's churchyard. It closed in around 1858 and the building was demolished. In 1860, the New Grammar School was founded from the amalgamation of this school with the Blue Cap School, a charity school founded around 1700 which had closed in 1852. It occupied a large schoolhouse and headmaster's house at 108 Welsh Row. In 1885, it incorporated the grammar school of Acton, and became known as Nantwich and Acton Grammar School. The former schoolhouse and headmaster's house at 108 Welsh Row is listed at grade II; it has diapering, latticed windows and an octagonal bell tower.

The school moved to a new, larger building at the end of Welsh Row in 1921. In 1977, the school became comprehensive and was renamed Malbank School and Sixth Form College.

The earliest grammar school in Nantwich is usually considered to have been founded in around 1560; the first record of it, however, dates from 1572. It was founded by two London woolpackers, John and Thomas Thrush, who originated in Nantwich. William Webb, writing in 1622/3, stated that the school's aim was to further the "teaching of the children of the poor and others". The Wilbraham family later became the main benefactor and, by 1716, they were nominating the school's masters. The timber-framed school building in the churchyard of St Mary's was formerly the town's guild hall. Like the adjacent church, the schoolhouse appears to have survived the fire of 1583; it is not listed among the buildings destroyed, and Webb states that the fire consumed "all the dwellings from the river-side to the other side of the church ... saving only the school-house". In 1611, Randle Kent, an early schoolmaster, had the existing building extended with the addition of a porch to the south face.

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