[1] In 1574 Lincoln City Corporation had reached an agreement with Robert Monson who was donating the Greyfriars for use as a Grammar School.

In 1861 the Grammar school started to move to a new site on Upper Lindum Terrace, to the east of Lincoln Cathedral.

In 1589 the City Council decided to store gunpowder and matches, as well as armour, in a chamber in the undercroft under schoolroom.

The first of these, published in 1628, was Transitionum formulae, a book which was intended to teach his pupils skills in oratory and writing based on Latin and Greek texts.

In 1724 when John Goodhall was appointed master, the City added an additional £30 to the salary of £20 already being paid by the Dean and Chapter.

[8] There is a lengthy description of the School under Mr Hewthwaite, who was the master from 1765 to 1791, by Henry Digby Beste in his Personal and Literary Memorials.

The door was too heavy for infant hands to move with ease.... inside was placed a lumbering, ugly pulpit, into which, at the commencement and end of the labours and sorrows of each day, the head master retired, while that most important of all animals, the head boy, read a few collects, our matins and vespers.

..... the table was now covered by a green cloth ; and at its hither side, opposite to the Windsor arm-chair, was a long bench, on which the boys of the first two classes had the privilege of being seated during their attempts to translate Homer and Horace into the Lincolnshire dialect... On each side was a range of what might be called either desks or pews, The scholars were those sons of citizens who came to get a little useless Latin before being bound to an useful trade.

we lifted up the cover of the usher's desk: we beheld a numero of the Gentleman's Magazine, some other new publication, and a nail- knife.

Besides light reading, and filing his nails, Mr. C— had another source of amusement, during the intervals of the classes or even during their recitations, in picking the powder out of his hair.

In Mr Hewthwaite's desk they found what seemed to announce him as more elevated in learning as well as in station ; -a book in an unknown character, which one of the bigger boys informed us was Hebrew.....We examined , with thrilling curiosity, the instruments of torture kept in each of these desks : we applauded the ingenious mercy with which the ferulas or canes were by their thickness accommodated to the ages of the sufferers in the respective schools.

Carter was a notable antiquarian recording Roman discoveries in Lincoln and a good classical scholar who published a translation of Seneca's Tragedies.

[11] Carter was also the Perpetual Curate of the nearby St Swithin's Church on Free School Lane, which was re-built in 1801 during his curacy.

The second mastership has been temporally entrusted Mr. Robert Drury, for the express purpose of trying to establish how far it will meet the wishes of the inhabitants to adopt system of education not exclusively of classical tendency.

[13] This was a time when Lincoln's commercial and engineering economy was starting to grow and education in Latin and Greek was no longer a priority.

[14] The corporation now appointed an English master in charge of the Lower School to broaden the scope of the subjects taught, while the Rev James Adcock continued to teach Latin and Greek.

The Master was now forced to retreat to the Broadgate house, as the Lower School took up all of the upper storey of the Greyfriars.

Additionally it was found in 1849 that the Usher or English master had become a Wesleyan and the Rev James Adcock was forced to resign as he was failing to supervise the school.

In 1858 surplus funds from the ancient hospitals at Mere and Spital in the Street, which in medieval times had belonged to the Knights Hospitallers were awarded by the Court of Chancery to the Grammar School.

The Dean and Chapter objected and instead the new Headmaster's House and boarding block was built in 1861 on Upper Lindum Road.

The old Master's house on the other side of the Broadgate was sold in 1862[19] In order to provide more room for the pupils in 1858 the council gave notice to the Lincoln Mechanics' Institute to vacate the undercroft of the Greyfriars.

The Mechanics' Institute had been established in the undercroft after it was vacated by the Spinning or Jersey School in 1831, and provided technical classes for apprentices and artisans working in Lincoln's growing engineering and commercial sector.

These included Henry Whitehead Moss who became headmaster of Shrewsbury School and Evelyn Abbott, a notable classical scholar.

In 1876 there were 100 boys in the school and it was reported that they were well taught in Latin, English and French and were receiving a sound commercial education.

During the War the school continued in temporary buildings adjacent to Lincoln Hospital on Lindum Terrace.