Sir Roger Manwood's School

In 1563 Sir Roger Manwood founded a Free Grammar School in Sandwich to make education accessible to the townspeople. Since 1563 a great deal has changed. The original school building still stands, but the School has occupied its present site since 1895. In creating his new Free School in Sandwich, Sir Roger Manwood ensured that it would have firm foundations. The present School is hugely indebted to his foresight - there are four Foundations which still today appoint Governors: the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Lincoln College, Oxford, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and the Diocese of Canterbury. Sir Roger Manwood's inspiration lasted two and a half centuries, into a mid-Victorian era which saw the School, like many Elizabethan foundations, drift into anonymity.