probably be near his church of the Blessed Mary, and there is indeed evidence in support of this surmise. This is provided by later references to a medieval school to be found in the borough records, which, scanty though they are, all appear to relate to the same site, apparently that of the school of 1206. For the most explicit of these references we are indebted to the misdemeanour of a fifteenth-century headmaster, of whom otherwise we should not have heard. The record of this court case belongs to the year 1464.
In the Colchester Court Rolls for that year it is recorded that "the Master of the Schools is in the common habit of casting the dung of his school over and beyond the stone wall of the town at le posterne and there making a dung hill"—for which offence he was fined 4d. (Translation of Court Rolls, unpublished. The plural form scholae was the normal usage for the time and doubtless here means " school," singular.) That the postern by St. Mary's is referred to seems certain from the next entries in the Rolls :— That William Beeche and John Foster act similarly with the slops of St. Mary's Church; and That John Cratoun has made a dung hill at le posterne. Furthermore, of the three posterns in the town walls this appears never to have been known by any other name than merely (West) Postern, whereas the other two have long borne the name of " gate " (Scheregate and Rye-gate).
The reference thus limits the area in which we shall seek to place the actual school building. Its wording indicates that the offence had been practised for some time, and that the ditch had become the refuse dump for the school, as also for the church, and as such rubbish would not be carried any great distance it seems a fair inference that the building was close to the town wall, hard by the postern, and to the south of it. Evidently, or it would have been outside the boundary of the sake. The case for locating the building near the town wall is perhaps strengthened by an earlier reference in the Court Rolls, where in a will registered in 1353 one, Waryn Parker, bequeathed seven acres of land "opposite the great school." From the wording and from the size of the plot of land, seven acres, we may reasonably assume that it was arable land outside the wall, in which case the school must have occupied some prominent position near the wall in order to be cited as a landmark. Moreover, the term " great school " would be more appropriately applied to the " school of the township " than, for instance, to a parish or chantry school.
All the references to an early school building in Colchester that I have been able to discover have now been reviewed. In none of them is the exact situation described ; indeed, it is not possible to prove that they all refer to the same school, although the inference is strong that they do. While these sources are thus admittedly indefinite in their reference to the school's position they are at least coherent, and if we may venture a guess we shall be tempted to place the ancient building in the space between the west end of St. Mary's Church and the town wall. A "great school" so
