The official foundation of Durham School is 1414, when Bishop Thomas Langley instituted a school of grammar and a school of song. However, these were themselves reformations of prior schools which had existed for centuries before. One of these was the Almonry School, which flourished from circa 1350 until the Dissolution of 1541, where it was amalgamated into the Durham Langley Schools.

Much of our information on the Almonry School comes from the 'Rites of Durham', written circa 1593 by an anonymous author. This manuscript Roll comprised of sixty-five pieces of paper stitched together to form a continuous roll sixty-seven feet in length. This had belonged to Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1792-1862), the Durham School student and friend of Percy Shelley, who was able to donate it to the Surtees Society. This manuscript, and others like it compiled by the Surtees Society, had the following to say about the Almonry School: 

"Ther weare certaine poor children onely maynteyned and releyved wth ye almesse & Benevolence of the whole house, wch weare cauled ye childrine of ye aumerey going daily to ye fermy schole being all together mayntened by ye whole Covent with meat drynke and lerni'ge."

It is referred to as "ye fermy schole" here because the school was taught out of the 'fermery' or 'lay infirmary', where a number of elderly men and women- many of whom would have been employed by the monastery or otherwise related to the Durham monks. According to the Rites of Durham, this was "without" and "North" of the Abbey gate; my approximate guess of the location, therefore, is pictured above, around 26 North Bailey.

Later manuscripts dating from the mid-1650s dictated that the pupils of the Almonry School ate the leftover food that the Novices had finished with. "The meat... was carried in at a door adjoining the great kitchen window into a little vault in the West end of the Frater house like unto a pantry called the Covie, which had a man that kept it called the Clarke of the Covie, and had a window within it, where one of two of the Children did receive their meat and drink of the said Clarke, out of the Covie or Pantry window so called, and the said children did carry it, to the Almery or loft, which Clarke did wait upon them every mail, and to see that they kept good order."

Almonry School students had various tasks and responsibilities within the Cathedral. Amongst these was to participate in the vigil of a dead monk, during which the schoolboys were expected to sit by the body and read David's psalter from dusk until eight in the morning. It was also the duty of the Almonry students to maintain the Paschal candle, a candle of immense size that was lit at Easter. 

According to Nicholas Orme's excellent piece of scholarship "The Schools and Schoolmasters of Durham, 1100-1539" (published in Archaeologia Aeliana, Ser. 5 vol. 39 (2010), p. 289-305), the Almonry School cohort numbered 30 pupils from at least 1438 to 1539. These consisted of the relatives of monks as well as boys admitted "at the request of lords and magnates whom we cannot offend". The pupils were taught by a non-monastic teacher, of whom first mention comes in 1351-1352. From 1438 to Christmas 1442 the Almonry Schoolmaster was dismissed in favour of the pupils being taught at the Langley Grammar School in Palace Green free of charge. This arrangement eventually dissolved, partially as the almonry boys' duties in the Cathedral conflicted with their learning at the early Langley School. In circa 1453, a memorandum from the prior and chapter of Durham Cathedral protested that the rights of the almonry school had been impeded by Robert Grene, the Langley Grammar Master and early Durham School Headmaster. Grene complained that the school was teaching not only the almonry boys – i.e. the relations of the monks of the Cathedral- but also the boys outside the monastery, and implicitly were poaching pupils from the Grammar School itself. He called for the bishop to ban the practise. The monks responded that the almonry had always admitted external pupils, although acknowledged that this comprised only a small amount of the overall roll. 

One final responsibility of the Almonry School boys is worthy of comment. In 1347-8, a payment is noted "to the boy bishop of the almonry, 3s 4d." This was an interesting tradition in which a pupil of the Almonry School was selected to be Bishop of Durham for the day. The ceremony was one typical of medieval pageantry where religious ritual was parodied, with the lowly members of the Almonry raised to the highest rank in the city. While we do not know exactly what duties the Boy Bishop had, it is possible that he led the Accession Day Procession to other churches, and delivered a sermon written by one of the monks. This took place in the early summer, near Pentecost in late May or early June.