When Walter Bigg, thought to have been Innkeeper of St Giles in the Fields, a Sheriff of London, Master of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, and MP for Wallingford, died in 1659, he left £10 for the education of six poor boys at a school in Wallingford.

The Wallingford Corporation Minute Book shows that the school was active in 1672.

The school buildings were at St John's Green from 1717–80, through a lease bought with Bigg's endowment.

When the lease ended the school transferred to the headmaster's house, and later the upper room in the Town Hall was used a schoolroom until 1863, when the school briefly closed.

The boys’ and girls’ schools were amalgamated onto one site in 1904.