WE all know that St Peter's School is the oldest in York, right? Wrong.

So says Martin Lacy, historian and former Evening Press journalist. He has been delving into the records and has concluded that his alma mater, Archbishop Holgate's, is the most venerable school in the city.

St Peter's claims the title by insisting it is a direct descendant of the Minster School, founded by St Wilfrid, Bishop of York, in 676AD.

But there are many gaps in the records of this school. It could have gone out of existence when the original Minster was burned down in 741AD. And there is no evidence that the school existed at all during a century and a half of the Viking Kingdom of York.

A school did exist by 1070, but this may have been founded by Archbishop Wulstan (1002-1023). For the next five centuries written evidence about the school keeps cropping up, but there is no proof that it existed continuously.

The old Minster School closed under the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. St Peter's School charter, issued by Queen Mary, only dates back to 1557, as a document from 1844 confirms.

But Archbishop Holgate's Grammar School was set up by Archbishop Robert Holgate in 1546.

Furthermore, it was founded for "30 poor scholars of York" giving it a stronger link than St Peter's to the original St Wilfrid's Minster School, also known as York Grammar School but not as St Peter's, says Martin.

Game, set and match to Archbishop Holgate's..?

THIS set us thinking. Last night councillors considered contentious plans to "extinguish" a public footpath which crosses St Peter's School playing fields.

But which came first, the school or the footpath?

We think we have found the answer. In the 1840s, St Peter's School was in dire straits and about to close. Only a merger with York Proprietary School allowed it to survive.

It moved to the Proprietary School site in Clifton in 1845, and has stayed there ever since.

Thanks to help from Gill at York Reference Library, we were able to study the first Ordnance Survey map of the area, published in 1852. This shows the footpath concerned - on land not then owned by St Peter's School. Instead the path ran alongside a property called Clifton Cottage.

St Peter's subsequently expanded. Its music school is now on the site of Clifton Cottage and the path divides its rugby pitch from its cricket pitch.

This suggests the public footpath predates St Peter's. So shouldn't we keep the path and ask the school to move?

TODAY'S photo from the Osbaldwick Newts4Justice campaign shows them taking their protest to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in Water End, York - proposed developers of Derwenthorpe.

More tomorrow.

Updated: 08:44 Thursday, November 04, 2004