Description:Rev. Whiteacres, the Master of the Free Grammar School in Dilhorne ran a private school for the sons of Gentlemen here at Blythe Bridge and employed an Usher to teach the local boys at Dilhorne.
The free grammar school in Dilhorne was said to have been founded in the reign of Henry VIII by the Earl of Huntingdon. However the foundation was actually made at the beginning of the 17th century by the Reverend Richard Coke, the vicar of Dilhorne and five other inhabitants of the village, on land endowed for the purpose by the Earl of Huntingdon. The object of the school was to provide for a schoolmaster to teach grammar. However by the beginning of the 19th century, the school took in paying boarders who were taught a classical education whereas free scholars, that is those who did not pay, received only a limited education. There was some controversy about this in the village between about 1801 and 1815. Eventually it was decided that the school should not teach a classical education but simply English, writing and arithmetic. Children of the parish were taught free of charge except that they had to pay for their own books and one shilling a year towards fuel to heat the schoolroom. At the time of its closure in the 1870s it was known as Wheatacre's School
A lithograph by Michael Scott printed by W. Dean, Stoke-on-Trent.