Welsh Journals

parts of Wales and England, the free places in the grammar schools were by the early nineteenth century often held by local boys who were taught the three Rs, while the classical side was maintained by fee-paying day pupils and boarders. In other words, these schools had developed as, in effect, private schools catering for a somewhat higher social class and serving a wider geographical area. At Hawarden there were eight boys on the foundation and thirty-two pay-scholars including fifteen boarders; at Holywell there were sixteen free scholars and an unspecified number of fee-payers, while at St. Asaph there were about thirty children 'taught reading, writing and arithmetic, and classics occasionally'. A note on the grammar school buildings is relevant here. At Hawarden the original grammar school building of 1608 occupied the usual position on the edge of the churchyard; it was enlarged in 1814 and rebuilt on another site later in the century, after which the original building was demolished to make room for St. Deiniol's Library.' At Holywell the grammar school occupied what had originally been a chapel built by Margaret, Countess of Richmond, and which we know today as St. Winefride's Chapel, from which it eventually moved to a new school.6 At St. Asaph the original grammar school had been held in part of the cathedral and then in the parish church before moving to Roe Gau in 1780, a building which survives today as a private house in Mill Street, from which it moved later in Victoria's reign.7 Thus the only surviving example in Flintshire of an early grammar school building is the one at Northop, even though it had ceased to teach classical subjects by the beginning of Victoria's reign. Turning now to the ten non-classical endowed schools listed by the Charity Commissioners for Flintshire, all but one, viz. the school at Trelawnyd founded in 1711 by the will of Dr D. Williams, the eminent Presbyterian divine, to teach readme, writing and the Assembly's Catechism, were of Anglican foundation. Lady Jeffreys' School at Bangor Is-coed, whose building of 1728 still survives though no longer in use as a school, taught reading, writing and the Church Catechism as an inscribed tablet on the front of the building still proclaims. The Free School at Hanmer, which is still in use as a school, has a worn tablet on the side of the building recording that the school was built in 1676 and restored in 1850. Further extensions were made in 1871 and 1894. This school retains its fine arch-braced roof trusses and three wall-boards which were originally painted with the lord's Praver, the Ten Commandments and the Creed. In 1839 there were about fortv children at Hanmer who were taught reading free of charge but had to my for other instruction. The Commissioners went on to describe the school founded at Llanasa in 1675, whose building was demolished about thirty years ago. It was noted as accommodating six poor children and some pay-scholars in 1839 Report, p.200; D. R. Thomas, The History of the Diocese of St. Asaph (Oswestry, 3 vols., 1908-13), vol 2, p.384; W. Bell Jones, 'Hawarden Grammar School', in Flints. Hist. Soc. Pub., vol. 6 (1916-17), p65. 1839 Report, p 178. 1839 Report, p.231; Thomas, op. cit., vol. 1, p.388.