The account below runs from the founding of the school to about the turn of the twentieth century. It stops there on purpose. Everyone named in it is long dead, which is the right place for a public page to end.
1548
William Craven was born at Appletreewick, three miles up the dale from Burnsall, and went to London as an apprentice. He prospered in the Merchant Taylors' Company, was knighted, and in 1610 became Lord Mayor of London.
He did not forget the dale. In 1602 he founded a grammar school at Burnsall, and by a deed of 21 May 1605 he endowed it.
1624
The school was further endowed by Sir William's will of August 1616, and by the will of Dame Elizabeth Craven of 16 June 1624. Those wills also provided for repairs to the parish church and to the school, and for an usher, supported by a rentcharge on the Nassey Hall estate.
Those endowments have never been spent. They are what the Foundation still administers.
1876
By the middle of the nineteenth century the old grammar school foundations across England were being reorganised under the Endowed Schools Acts. A Scheme for the administration of the Foundation was approved by the Charity Commission on 17 February 1876 and by Her Majesty in Council on 23 October that year.
It created a governing body of six, appointed by the Earl of Craven, by the Justices of the Peace for the West Riding, by the Rectors and Churchwardens of the two medieties of the parish, and by the ratepayers of the townships: Burnsall and Thorpe sub Montem jointly, Appletreewick, and Hartlington.
That Scheme, as since amended, still governs the Foundation today.
Sources are in the Foundation's own records, which are held by the Clerk. If you can correct or add to any of this, the trustees would be glad to hear from you — get in touch.
