Shrewsbury School was founded in response to those interruptions to the town's ancient traditions in education in the sixteenth century: the disruption caused significant local ill feeling,[14] and by 1542, townspeople were beginning to petition Henry VIII for remedy.

[9] The statesman Sir Rowland Hill (who published the Geneva Bible[15] and is reputed to be the inspiration for the hero of Shakespeare's As You Like It of the same name,[16] had the grant of certain of the abbey's holdings[17] and was involved in the founding petitions.

[18][19] Also involved in the founding petitions was Reginald Corbet (who married Hill's heiress, Alice Gratewood), a justice of the peace for Shropshire and commissioner for chantries in the county, who was paid ten shillings in 1548 "for a supplication exhibited to the Lord Chancellor to obtain a free school.

[9] The school began operation in a house and land purchased from John Proude in 1551,[21] together with three rented half-timbered buildings, which included Riggs Hall, built in 1450.

Archaeological excavations of the sites of these first buildings in 1978 revealed finds going back to the Saxon period, along with relics of the school, now in the town collections.

Prior to his appointment a special license had been obtained from Mathew Parker, Elizabeth I's first Archbishop of Canterbury, on the grounds that Ashton not being available would damage the progress of the school's foundation.

The school attracted large numbers of pupils from Protestant families in Shropshire, North Wales and beyond, with 266 boys on its roll at the end of 1562.

For example, Sir Philip Sidney (who had a well-known correspondence with his father about his schooling)[25][26][27] lodged in the castle ward with George Leigh, who had been Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury.

[28] In this period Elizabeth I's favourite Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester also visited the school to see his nephew Thomas Sidney and attended a service at St Mary's Church.

Under these regulations, the borough bailiffs (mayors after 1638) had the power to appoint masters, with Ashton's old St John's College, Cambridge having an academic veto.

When the town's bailiffs came to install their preferred candidate on 31 August 1608, the building had already been occupied by about 60 women from the town (including three spinsters, two widows, the wives of mercers, tailors, weavers, butchers, shoemakers, tanners, glovers, carpenters and coopers) taking the headmaster's side and preferring Gittins on the basis that only the son of a burgess could serve as second master.

Whereas ye have, out of your good affection to our present service and towards the supply of our extraordinary occasions, lent unto us the sum of £600, being a stock belonging to your school founded by our royal predecessor King Edward the Sixth, in this our Town of Shrewsbury.

[9] During the Commonwealth period following the execution of Charles I, Richard Baxter suggested the establishment of a university to serve Wales at Shrewsbury, using the school's premises, but due to lack of financial provision it came to nothing.

Nevertheless, diplomat Richard Hill, Baron Digby Governor of King's County in Ireland, Robert Price, Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, poet and politician Arthur Maynwaring and Thomas Bowers, Bishop of Chichester, attended the school at this time.

[42] In the early eighteenth century, Daniel Defoe also visited the school, noting: "Here is a good Free-school, the most considerable in this Part of England; founded by King Edward VI and endowed by Queen Elizabeth, with a very sufficient Maintenance for a Chief or Headmaster, and three Under-masters or Ushers.

[50] Butler was succeeded by his pupil Benjamin Hall Kennedy (of Latin Primer fame) in 1836,[49] who in turn gave way to Henry Whitehead Moss in 1866.

The school continued in the 1600s buildings on its original site, until it was relocated in 1882, when Moss moved the school from its original town centre location to a new site of 150 acres (61 ha) in Kingsland (an area of land which at one time belonged to the Crown and granted to the Corporation at "a rather remote period, the exact date of which appears not to be known", but apparently before 1180[54]), on the south bank of the River Severn overlooking the town.

In order to meet this new purpose, it was remodelled by Sir Arthur Blomfield (whose other educational commissions include Marlborough College and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford).

[30] Its south and east windows in the chapel are by Kempe, employing medieval narrative style for lives of saints, scenes from the history of the school.

"An accomplished classicist, a witty writer especially of light verse, and a priest of orthodox convictions ..."[72] During the Edwardian period Oldham's Hall was built (1911).

Severn Hill, the linear decedent of the house of which Irvine was captain, holds his ice axe from the expedition, discovered in 1933 by Wyn Harris.

[85] The future Deputy Prime Minister of the UK Michael Heseltine attended the school immediately after the Second World War on a scholarship.

[86] The comedian, actor, writer and television presenter Michael Palin of Monty Python's Flying Circus attended the school shortly afterwards and a scholarship is now available named for him.

[125] The main inter-house cross-country races are still called the Junior and Senior Paperchase, although no paper is dropped and urban development means the historical course can no longer be followed.

Every October the whole school participates in a 3.5-mile run called "The Tucks", originally intended to prevent pupils attending a local horse race.

[133] Boys' 1st XI season focuses on the Silk Trophy, which competed for by Shrewsbury, Eton, Oundle and an overseas touring side at the end of each summer term.

Queen Elizabeth I, on a journey to the West Midlands in 1565 intended to visit Shrewsbury to see one of these performances, but "her Majesty not having proper information mistook the time and when she came to Coventry, hearing it was over, returned to London".

On several occasions the school put on pageants for the visiting Council of the Marches, as in 1581 when the Lord President, Sir Henry Sidney, leaving the town by barge, was greeted by several scholars on an island down stream of the castle dressed as green nymphs with willow branches tied to their heads reciting verses across the water: And will your honour needs depart, and must it needs be so.

Music was by John Ranald Stainer, OBE, FRCM, FRCO, Hon RAM, and the script was written by Paul Dehn OS (best known for the screenplays for Goldfinger, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the Planet of the Apes sequels and Murder on the Orient Express).

[233] During the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 the school donated over 1,600 items of personal protective equipment to the NHS, including face shields it had 3D printed in its technology labs.