King's Cliffe Endowed Primary School has a long and fascinating history, with its origins stretching back more than 300 years.

The Beginnings of the Endowed School

The story begins in 1688, when Richard Wildbore of King's Cliffe left an endowment of £5 per year to the Rector and Overseers of the Poor. The money was to be used to appoint a suitable person to teach writing to eight boys from the poorest families in the parish.

The next chapter was the establishment of two charity schools in Bridge Street.

In 1727, the Reverend William Law founded a school for the education and “full clothing” of 14 poor girls from Kings Cliffe, later increased to 18. Law's endowment paid the salary of the schoolmistress and provided for the girls to be taught “in reading, knitting, and every useful kind of needlework.”

In 1745, Mrs Elizabeth Hutcheson founded a school for 18 poor boys, later increased to 20, which also provided their “full clothing”. She subsequently purchased a house for the schoolmaster and built a school alongside it. These buildings are now the Library House and adjoining schoolroom in Bridge Street.

In 1753, the Law and Hutcheson charities were joined together. Richard Wildbore's original £5 annual endowment was later attached to the Law and Hutcheson Boys' School.

Reverend Miles Joseph Berkeley

During the 19th century, a number of private day and boarding schools opened and closed in King's Cliffe. These were fee-paying schools whose pupils, usually boys, came largely from outside the parish.

One such school was opened in 1838 by the Reverend Miles Joseph Berkeley. It initially operated from a house in Hog Lane, possibly Wellington House, before moving in 1845 to an 18th-century house in Park Street. This later became the central part of the Endowed School building.

Berkeley was a remarkable scholar. From 1833 to 1868 he was Perpetual Curate of Apethorpe and Woodnewton. With no vicarage at Woodnewton, he came to live in King's Cliffe. He and his wife had 15 children, 13 of whom survived to adulthood, and the relatively modest income from his two parishes led him to establish his private school to help support his family.

His great passion, however, was botany and the study of fungi.

Berkeley developed an international reputation, with specimens sent to him from around the world for identification. These included specimens gathered by Charles Darwin during the voyage of HMS Beagle.

In 1845, Berkeley's work led him to identify the fungus associated with the potato blight that devastated crops in Ireland and parts of England. During his lifetime, he identified thousands of species of fungi and assembled an extensive collection of specimens, which was given to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1879.

His contribution to science was recognised with the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1863 and, in 1867, a Civil List pension for his services to botany and the study of plant diseases.

The Endowed School Opens

Changes to education during the second half of the 19th century led the Trustees of the Law and Hutcheson Charity Schools in Bridge Street to seek larger premises capable of accommodating more of the children of King's Cliffe.

Reverend Berkeley's former house and school in Park Street provided a suitable site. In the early 1870s, the Law and Hutcheson Trustees purchased the property and extended and altered it to provide separate schoolrooms for boys and girls.

King's Cliffe Endowed School opened on 13 January 1873.

Its first pupils included children transferred from the two existing charity schools, together with boys and girls joining the school for the first time.

A New Chapter

The school remained on its historic Park Street site for more than 140 years.

In February 2017, King's Cliffe Endowed Primary School moved into its current purpose-built school, with the development part-funded by the Foundation Trust.

Today, our school is very different from the charity schools established centuries ago, but our name provides an important link with that history and with generations of children who have been educated in King's Cliffe.