The original foundation dates from no later than 1330, when a new headmaster was admitted to the school by the Lincoln Cathedral Chapter. It was re-endowed in 1636 by a bequest of William Trollope, who had built the old school building in 1626. That building still exists in the Abbey Churchyard, although it was re-roofed and partially rebuilt in 1736 and the school moved to its present site in July 1921. In its original form, it appears to have been operated by the regular canons of Bourne Abbey but that was dissolved in 1536. The school continued but the nature of its management structure in this period is not wholly clear. In 1626, William Trollope provided it with a new building and in 1636, on his death, he endowed it as the "Free Grammar School of King Charles in the Town of Bourne in the County of Lincoln, of the foundation of William Trollope, gentleman", with £30 per year to pay the teacher's salary.
New buildings
In 1736, the building was re-roofed and partially rebuilt. With maintenance and the installation of better heating, the existing building continued until 1904, but it was feared the coming railways would have made better-equipped schools more accessible causing the school to fade away. Efforts were made to reinstate it once the First World War was over, and in 1920, it opened in the building of the former National School, in North Street. In 1921, once its longer-term premises in South Road were usable, it moved there. At this stage, it was run by trustees under the name of the 'Harrington and Trollope Secondary School', after Robert Harrington and William Trollope, two local seventeenth-century philanthropists whose bequests had been made for the poor and the school of Bourne respectively. Kesteven County Council topped up the funds required with an annual grant and by paying for free places at the school for pupils who qualified for assistance. In 1947, following the end of the Second World War and the Education Act 1944, management was taken over by the Kesteven County Council and the current name was adopted. Since 1974, the county concerned has been Lincolnshire, previously being controlled by the Kesteven Education Committee at Sleaford. In the 1970s, the school roll was around 400. In 2018 a new £3.5m building opened for the Science department. The block includes fifteen laboratories, a staff room, toilet facilities, and a climate-control system.
Houses
There is a house system and Form Groups within the school designated by the letters A to H in all year groups. All students are assigned 1 of 4 houses: Behn, Meitner, Rorschach and Tinbergen. Each house's name was chosen by its original leader in 2012. This replaced the system of five houses to match the five form groups in each year that existed before the school's expansion in 2012.
Badge
The school badge is a red shield with two gold bars and three red discs above: an escutcheon argent with two barsvert and three pommes in the chief. The heraldry is derived from that of the Bourne Town Council, which in turn, is based on the arms of the Wake family, medieval lords of the Manor of Bourne. The school shares the townmottoVigila et Ora, meaning "Watch and Pray". The reference is Christ's injunction to His disciples in St Matthew's Gospel: "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.".
Recognition
The school states it achieves "Advanced level" results in the top three for schools in the East Midlands. Its headmaster reported in his weekly bulletin that their 2017 GCSE results placed them second in Lincolnshire The Progress 8 for the 2017/18 academic year was +0.68, indicating a high improvement of student ability across their time at the school.
