church Schools There are primary schools in Kirkby Stephen and in the neighbouring parishes of Brough and Ravenstonedale. Secondary education for the town and surrounding area is provided by Kirkby Stephen Grammar School. This was founded in 1566 by Thomas Wharton, 1st Baron Wharton, under letters patent granted by Queen Elizabeth I. Although it has retained the name "grammar school", its old buildings were replaced long ago, and it is now a comprehensive school and Sports College with about 410 pupils. The grounds of the grammar school included for a time an open-air swimming pool built in the 1960s for the school and local community, which was open from May to August to members of the Kirkby Stephen and District Swimming Club and to visitors to the area. Governance Kirkby Stephen is in the parliamentary constituency of Penrith and the Border. Neil Hudson was elected its Conservative Member of Parliament at the 2019 General Election, replacing Rory Stewart. Before Brexit, the town was in the North West England European Parliamentary Constituency. Kirkby Stephen has a parish council and acts as a centre for villages and parishes that include Nateby, Ravenstonedale and Mallerstang. An electoral ward in the same name stretches south to Aisgill, with a total population at the 2011 Census of 2,580. The town had a 2011 population of 1,522, which was estimated to have risen to 1,647 in 2019. Scenic highlights Stenkrith Park is to the south of the town, on the B6259 road to Nateby. The river scenery marks a change from limestone at the head of the Eden Valley in Mallerstang to the red sandstone characteristic further along the Eden Valley. The main rock, from which most houses in Kirkby Stephen are built, is brockram, composed of fragments of limestone in a cement of red sandstone. The river at Stenkrith has carved this rock into many fantastic shapes, collectively known as the Devil's Grinding Mill or Devil's Hole. This natural scenery has been supplemented, in recent years, by three human additions. The Poetry Path has 12 stones, which were carved by the artist Pip Hall. They bear poems by Meg Peacock that depict a year in the life of a hill farmer. Eden Benchmark: Beside the river there is a sculpture by Laura White, entitled "Passage", one of the ten "Eden Benchmarks", a series of sculptures that have been placed at intervals along the River Eden