Ruabon Grammar School was, by tradition, founded in 1575 by Doctor Lloyd, then Vicar of Ruabon, though the earliest firm documentary mention of the school dates to 1618. It operated as an endowed grammar school, relying on substantial endowments to educate a select number of boys from the parish, and was housed in a building within St Mary’s churchyard that survives, remarkably, to this day.
The school’s early records were completely destroyed in 1858, when a catastrophic fire gutted Wynnstay, where they had been kept for safekeeping — a loss that means much of the school’s first two centuries is known only through fragments and later reconstruction.
New arrangements ended the old endowment-school model across Wales, and in 1894 Ruabon became the first “County School” in the country, receiving direct funding from Denbighshire County. New classrooms and laboratories were added in 1896, with further major building works following in the 1920s and 1940s. In 1922, a separate secondary school for girls — later known as Ruabon Grammar School for Girls — opened across the road from the boys’ school.
The grammar school era came to a close in 1967, when the abolition of the 11-plus examination led Denbighshire’s education committee to merge the old Ruabon Grammar School into a new, mixed 11–16 comprehensive with a sixth form: Ysgol Rhiwabon, which continues to educate the parish’s children today.
Ysgol Rhiwabon has continued to mark its long institutional history rather than let it fade: the school has actively preserved its Eisteddfod traditions, a distinctively Welsh cultural competition format, as part of school life, and continues to draw pupils from Ruabon and the surrounding villages including Acrefair and Cefn Mawr. It stands as one of the clearest threads connecting Ruabon's Elizabethan past to its present-day community.
The original Old Grammar School building on Church Street is a listed building, protected for its historic and architectural interest, and survives as part of the streetscape around St Mary's churchyard; it is not generally open to the public as a visitor attraction, but can be viewed from the street free of charge at any time. Ysgol Rhiwabon, the school's modern successor, operates on a separate site nearby as a working secondary school and, like any school, is not open to casual visitors during term time.
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