Records of Heskin Pemberton's school

SMHK/1 Foundation and endowment

SMHK1/1 Foundation documents

SMHK1/2 1618 Endowment

SMHK1/3 Later endowments - property in Heskin

SMHK2 Government and management

SMHK2/1 Governors

SMHK2/2 Managers

SMHK2/3 Instruments of management and Charity Commission orders

SMHK2/4 Staff

SMHK2/5 Other administrative records

SMHK3 Financial records

SMHK3/1 Account books

SMHK3/2 Other financial records

SMHK4 School premises

SMHK4/1 Buildings

SMHK4/2 Coal mining and compensation claims

SMHK5 Miscellaneous

SMHK10 Horseman's and Lathom's charities

SMHK10/1 Thomas Horseman's charity

SMHK10/2 Peter Lathoms's charity

SMHK11 Heskin town charity

These records may be subject to access restrictions

Deposited by the Clerk to the Governors, 8 June 1984

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Many records are still held at the school and space has been left in the catalogue for these should they be deposited at the Record Office in the future.

The grammar school at Heskin was founded in 1597 by James Pemberton. He was the son of a local farmer from the parish of Eccleston who had gone to London where he became a goldsmith, was knighted in 1603 and was made Lord Mayor of London in 1611. He endowed the school with an annual income and in his will, proved in 1613, he left it further money. In 1618 his widow, Anne, made this latter payment of £50 chargeable to estates in London and Essex.

The school, for up to 200 boys, probably opened in 1600 although the earliest surviving administrative records date from 1614. It was controlled by a body of twelve governors under the auspices of the Goldsmiths' Company of London and Brazenose College, Oxford. In 1807 there were 61 boys at the school but by the mid-nineteenth century it was declining and in danger of closure. By the 1860s it had ceased to be a grammar school in anything but name and took both male and female pupils aged 4 to 14.

The management of the school was reorganised in stages during the second half of the century and the school was rescued by the gradual adoption of state control and financial assistance. In 1865 it voluntarily acceded to government inspection, in 1875 it was defined as a Church of England school and in 1903 was reorganised under the 1902 Act. It became a voluntary-aided Church of England primary school, supported jointly by the Diocese of Manchester (Blackburn from 1927) and Lancashire County Council, with local authority, diocesan and foundation governors and newly appointed school managers. It has retained that status to the present day and the title of 'grammar school' was finally dropped in the 1950s.

Further details of the school's history can be found in Heskin Pemberton's school, 1597-1997: a 400th anniversary history, by Alan G Crosby; published by the governors, 1997.