00:00Hello, I'm Philip Ryden. I'm a retired member of the staff of the History
00:04Department of Nottingham University. I have a long-standing interest in the
00:07history of Chesterfield, my hometown. We're going to have a look at some of the
00:12more interesting buildings in the town centre this morning and I'll say
00:15something about the history of each of them. Chesterfield Grammar School was
00:18founded by two generations of the Fulgham family of Walton Hall. It probably
00:24opened in 1598 although the exact date can't be established. On the other hand
00:28it definitely did not open in 1594 which for many years the school claimed as a
00:32state of foundation. The school was quite successful in the 17th century for much
00:37of the 18th century. Like many grammar schools it decayed at the end of the
00:4018th century and for a time in the early 19th century was closed completely. It
00:45was revived in the 1840s and in 1846 after the old building of 1710 had been
00:53demolished a new schoolhouse was built which is now the left-hand
00:58most end of the existing buildings. The buildings were extended in 1860 and 1872
01:04and then on a large scale in 1901 when the final stage the right-hand end of the
01:10large stone built range facing Sheffield Road was built. The last major addition
01:15to school buildings was in 1928 when a wing was built by the county council along
01:21the north side of the site. By the 1930s the site had become wholly unsuitable for a
01:26large boys grammar school and it was intended to move the school to land at
01:31Brookside on Chatsworth Road where the governors had bought land for playing
01:35fields in the 1920s. That ambition was finally achieved in two stages in 1959 and
01:411967. After that these old buildings became part of the College of Technology
01:47which had been the plan since the 1930s and remain in use by Chesterfield College to
01:53this day. The College has renovated the buildings and they now look cleaner and
01:58smarter than they have done publicly since they were built but basically the
02:02school is still on the site on the site on which it was founded in the late 16th century.
02:08you
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