The King's School, Chester

The King's School, Chester, is one of the seven 'King's Schools' established or re-endowed and renamed by King Henry VIII in 1541 after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The others are at Canterbury, Rochester, Ely, Peterborough, Worcester and Gloucester. The school's institutional roots run back into the medieval monastic and cathedral school of St Werburgh's Abbey in Chester, which became Chester Cathedral under Henry VIII's reorganisation. The school operated for nearly five centuries within the Cathedral precincts before moving to its modern campus on Wrexham Road, just outside the historic Chester walls.

King's Chester is co-educational, educates around 1,139 pupils aged 4-18 across an integrated Infant, Junior, Senior and Sixth Form, and is a member of the HMC. The school provides choristers to Chester Cathedral, continuing the medieval song-school tradition. The Headmaster is Dr Sue Stuart.

The school's modern alumni list spans the British political establishment, science and the arts. The senior Conservative politician Sir Matt Hancock — former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care during the COVID-19 pandemic, and former Culture Secretary — was educated at King's Chester. In British military and naval leadership: Sir James Dutton, former Commandant General Royal Marines. In music: George Guest CBE, the renowned organist who served as choirmaster at St John's College, Cambridge for forty years and developed one of the leading Anglican church-music traditions of the twentieth century.

In academia and science: Hagan Bayley, the head of chemical biology at the University of Oxford and founder of Oxford Nanopore Technologies; the Cambridge biomolecular archaeologist Matthew Collins; the popular mathematician and author Rob Eastaway (Why Do Buses Come in Threes? and the long-running puzzles column for New Scientist); and the engineer Sir Michael Burdekin, emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering at Manchester. In sport: the British and World indoor rowing champion Graham Benton; the England and Great Britain hockey goalkeeper James Fair. In acting: Nickolas Grace, who played Anthony Blanche in the 1981 ITV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited and Lord Patten in The Hour. The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the King's School Chester Foundation.