Norwich School (independent school) the founding of an episcopal grammar school in 1096 by Herbert de Losinga, first Bishop of Norwich. The continuity of the current Norwich School with the 1096 school would make it one of the oldest surviving schools in the United Kingdom. The newly established school occupied a site on "Holmstrete" in the parish of St Matthew between the close of Norwich Cathedral and the River Wensum. Until the English Reformation the bishop would appoint the headteacher (termed Head Master by the school), though on several occasions this role had been fulfilled by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The earliest known headteacher
Norwich "in her state doth stand With towns of high'st regard the fourth of all the land", as Michael Drayton noted in "Poly-Olbion" (1612). The wealth generated by the wool trade throughout the Middle Ages financed the construction of many fine churches, so that Norwich still has more medieval churches than any other city in Western Europe north of the Alps. Throughout this period Norwich established wide-ranging trading links with other parts of Europe, its markets stretching from Scandinavia to Spain and the city housing a Hanseatic warehouse. To organise and control its exports to the Low Countries, Great Yarmouth, as