Education and innovation have always been important to the Town and, although schoolmasters had been recorded before they were usually attached to the Church, the first Free Grammar School was supported financially by John Drake, a Publican on Church Street, from 1702. He would pay the Schoolmaster £25 per annum, the only condition being that he should be unmarried as Drake was himself. After Drake’s death the majority of his estate would be put in a Trust to enable the erection of a separate School Building, which opened in 1715. An endowment from a Trustee, Jonas Tonson, enabled the erection of a Lower Free School next door.