Ruthin School
Ruthin School is one of the oldest public schools in the United Kingdom. Located on the outskirts of Ruthin, the county town of Denbighshire in North Wales, the school is over seven hundred years old and has been co-educational since 1990.BeginningsRuthin School was founded in the wake of Edward I's conquest of Wales. Whilst the precise date of the foundation is not clear, in his history of the school "Ruthin School: The First Seven Centuries", Keith Kenyon-Thompson suggested that 1284 was the most likely date and Reginald de Grey the most likely founder. In any event it is clear from the Taxatio of 1291 that there was a flourishing collegiate church and school at Ruthin.Evidence of the School in the subsequent centuries is sparse. Surviving documents such as a Confirmatio of 1314/1315 which recognised the existence, rights and liberties of "collegio de Ruthin fundato per Reginald de Grey" indicate the existence of the School but nothing more is known of the size of the establishment.Following Owain Glyndŵr's attack on Ruthin in September 1400, it appears that the collegiate church and presumably also the School continued to function unscathed until the dissolution of the former in 1535. Thereafter evidence for the School's continuation is sketchy at best, but it is certain that in 1561 the tithes of the sinecure of Llanelidan were applied to the use of the School, which indicates that the pupils at that time would have been from local homes. Today the school is a fee paying school with pupils from foreign countries as well as local children. The state school Ysgol Brynhyfryd is across the road.
