Those walking along the North Bailey road from the Durham Marketplace to the Chorister School will find, just next to the Assembly Rooms Theatre, two buildings at Numbers 38 and 39. Both of eighteenth century origin, these are now home to the University's Department of Classics and Ancient History, but for a short time in the late nineteenth century, they served as the original home of Bow School. These houses once belonged to Bow's founder William Henry Bramwell, who overcome an immense personal handicap to establish a successful school in 1885. 

William Henry Bramwell was involved in an unfortunate childhood accident that crippled him for life, meaning that he spent much of his childhood and university years confined to his home with his mother and three sisters Emily, Dora, and Edith. He moved to a different house, 39 North Bailey, upon graduating as a bachelor from Durham University in 1882, and it is here that he began privately tutoring pupils in the way that would later stand him in good stead at Bow. On 21st October 1884 the house next door, which had fallen vacant, was let by the University to Bramwell, with a statement being released that said "that the house No. 38 North Bailey be let to Mr. W.H. Bramwell for a year from Christmas next, and for further terms of six months as the University may from time to time determine, for the rent of £55 per annum for the first three years— the furniture to be bought of the University as a valuation." Ten days later, Branwell officially announced his intention of opening a boys preparatory school.

The first pupil at Bow, Alfred Appleby Longden, was the second cousin of Bramwell and the son of a local solicitor; he would go on to attend Durham School. He joined the school in January 1886 joining the 1st XI and the 1st XV, and in later life become a noted art gallery and museum director, serving with honours as a major in World War One. Further pupils began to trickle in, until there were eight pupils by September. The first assistant master to be appointed was Lawrence Gee (1861-1932) in April 1885, who had recently taken a Licence in Theology in Hatfield Hall. He would be replaced in May 1886 by the 24-year-old Arthur Thomas Rogers. 

At his point the school had no official name; it was known as 'Bramwell's School' colloquially, and in the press it was the 'Preparatory School for Boys'. The first mention of 'Bow School' comes in a press notice dated to Christmas Eve 1886. The name 'Bow' was in honour of the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, a short distance from their location on the South Bailey; Bramwell's sister Emily had been married there in September 1885. Accomodation for the recently-named Bow School was getting increasingly limited, and Bramwell began negotiating the move to the current site in Quarry Heads Lane; these plans were interrupted, however, by the tragic death of Assistant Master Arthur Rogers in December 1887.

Rogers' notice of death in the Durham County Advertiser (dated to the 16th December 1887) shines some interesting light on the subject. "It is a long time since there was such an outburst of genuine sorrow amongst the younger members of the community" opens the article, going on to say that the teacher's death was "somewhat sudden and unexpected". His death is listed as due to "as an affection of the spine or brain", but the precise cause of this is given some speculation. "Last year [1886] he sustained a fall from his bicycle, and lay for some time in a state of unconsciousness on the high road. The concussion from which he then suffered had doubtless left its evil results in his system, and it is possible he incurred further injury in the football match in which he was engaged at Houghton-le-Spring on Saturday last. The deceased was bitten by a dog during the last vacation, and though the animal was examined, and pronounced free from rabies, Mr Rogers could never divest himself of the idea, wholly without foundation, that he might fall a victim to hydrophobia. Being of an extremely nervous constitution, this apprehension doubtless contributed to his melancholy end." Arthur Thomas Rogers was an "ardent lover of athletic sports" and a keen young footballer, to the extent that he joined the Durham City Football Team in 1886 and was playing with them up to the week before his death. He died at the far too young age of 25. His replacement as assistant master was William Bingham Ashton Wynyard (1863-1915), who served from 1887 to 1893 and was himself a cricketer. 

Bramwell negotiated for the construction of a new school in 1888, thanks in large part to the inheritance of £6,000 by Dora and Edith Bramwell. By the Summer Term of 1889 teaching was able to go ahead, but Bramwell's ill health continued to affect him. He would soon be confined to a wheelchair, and so a series of lifts had to be added to Bow School to allow him to move between floors. He eventually died on the 12th of July 1917; a tribute published in the Durham County Advertiser reflected that "it was no ordinary force of character, and no ordinary sense of vocation, which impelled a man, who had been crippled from his earliest days, to disregard his physical disabilities, and his constitutional shrinking from publicity, and to fling himself and his means into the rough and tumble of a scholastic venture, in an age of keen competition."