OLD SCHOOL

This late-sixteenth-century building rests on the foundations of a fourteenth-century Dominican Friary which itself was built on the site of the eleventh-century Thetford Cathedral.   It is thus at the very centre of the historic core of the school.  Roger North, attorney-general during the reigns of William III and Mary II, was educated in this building from 1663.  In 1744 Thomas Paine, the radical thinker, author of Rights of Man, and contributor to the development of both the American and French Revolutions, began his schooling in this building.  The original building was extended during the Victorian period and now includes two classrooms and the main School Library as well as the original Old School Hall.