The name of this Wetherspoon pub recalls the building’s original use as a charity school, known as the Blue Coat School, from the school uniform. After 1547, the charitable work of the medieval guilds was taken over by the ‘Feoffees of the Common Lands of Rotherham’. For the next 300 years, the Feoffees acted as a kind of town council. In 1708, they opened a Charity School in a rented property until 1776, when it moved into a permanent building.