Endowment for the school came from the will of local
gentleman and politician
Robert Ward of
Castle Ward. Ward was the fourth son of
Bernard Ward, 1st Viscount Bangor, and grandson of
Michael Ward. Ward bequeathed £1,000 to be "…expended in building and endowing a School-house for the education of boys in Mathematics, Astronomy and Navigation…", in his family home town and parliamentary constituency. Initially established as
Bangor Endowed School, the school was originally situated on the site of the modern day
Bank of Ireland building on the corner of Main Street and Central Avenue. By the turn of the 20th century the school had changed its name to Bangor Grammar School and because of a growth in school population moved from site to site over a number of years. With the help of W.K. Crosby, the school moved to a new site on College Avenue, in the northeast of Bangor in 1906. The facade visible from College Avenue is a combination of two buildings:
Crosby House (known as the
Crosby Buildings), which dates back to 1905 and was named after the school's benefactor; and a later extension to the north, which was added as a Headmaster's residence around the time of the outbreak of
The Great War (1914–1918). Despite
Northern Ireland not being subject to conscription like the
rest of the United Kingdom, a significant number of Grammarians volunteered for the
British Armed Forces and fought in both World Wars, in particular the
Second World War (1939–1945). The school population was comparatively small at this time, reaching just 200 pupils in 1930 as opposed to 936 pupils in 2008. Two commemorative plaques are erected in the school assembly hall listing the names off all ex-pupils that died whilst serving in the British Armed Forces during both World Wars. The school's Debating Society minutes present a record of motions brought to the house concerning key events of the times, including a motion concerning the
Munich Agreement." ==Clubs and societies==