their child's education and well-being, should the father die and the family left "necessitous". A set of rules was created, which outlined how the school should be run; these were adopted at the first meeting of the subscribers of 26 February 1855. These rules included the ages of admission (between 7 and 12 years old), with boys being taught until the age of 14, and girls until the age of 15, and that the school was for orphans and necessitous children of warehousemen and clerks only. Proposals for a complementary day school were discussed extensively, but this idea was postponed until the orphan school had been successfully set up. In July 1855, the committee sent out advertisements for the election of the first children to the school. The earliest scholars were elected by subscribers to the institution; the condition of their election depended on a few factors, including how long the child's father had subscribed and the family's circumstances. Subscribers had a number of votes depending on how much money they had subscribed. Fifteen applications had been received by September, and on 29 October 1855, commonly referred to as the school's founding date, six children were elected into the school at the Athenaeum in Manchester. At this time there were no premises or staff since the committee wished for more time to plan for their own premises and staff. The children were instead sent to an existing boarding school in Shaw Hall, Flixton. However, six years later they moved to Park Place, Ardwick, in the centre of Manchester. By this time it had already been decided that a new school should be built and the foundation stone of the main building in Cheadle Hulme was laid in 1867. The School moved to its present site two years later. Foundation scheme Since the beginning, the school had been a boarding school, originally for the orphans (fatherless children) (known as "Foundationers") for whom it was established. As early as 1862, it started to accept fee paying boarders and an increasing number of day pupils to help to support the "Foundation Scheme". From 1921 the School had also decided to become part of the government's education programme, choosing in 1926 to become part of the Direct Grant system, with some of the day pupils funded by grants from the Board of Education. However, boarding remained the keystone of the school's objects and the