Edgeborough School

Overview

Edgeborough is became co-educational in 1992 and celebrated its centenary in 2006. The Headmaster is Chris Davies, former Head of Abingdon Prep School. Its grounds measure approximately 45 acres, including parts of its woodland which are centuries old. Frensham Place, a former country house.

The school is divided into four departments: Nursery, Pre-Prep, Lower Prep and Upper Prep, age-appropriate in terms of staffing, curriculum and resources. The school offers a broad curriculum to prepare students for their senior school of choice at age 13+. French is available from age three onwards and Latin from age nine. ICT, music, drama, art, pottery and design technology are taught by specialist teachers.

The school offers a range of extracurricular sporting activities including athletics, badminton, basketball, canoeing, a climbing wall, cricket, cross country, football, golf, gymnastics, hockey, lacrosse, martial arts, netball, rounders, rugby, swimming, table tennis, tennis and volleyball.

Edgeborough has four houses: Jackson, Burton, James and Keville, bi-weekly chapel services and Friday morning assemblies which include prayers and hymns. There is a prefectorial system in which sixth formers (year 8 students, aged 12–13) may become prefects, monitors or house or sport captains. Competition between houses sees a house point system in which students can earn points for their house supplemented with inter-house competitions in athletic, many field sports, swimming, art, music and basketball.

Facilities

Buildings and grounds include a floodlit astroturf pitch, golf course, theatre, dance studio, chapel and an open-air swimming pool. In addition, there are several pitches and two cricket pavilions, one of which has a mechanical score board. In the year 2000, the school underwent an extensive building and rebuilding programme, replacing its library and building its science labs. The Year-6-to-8 classroom block was renovated and a new dance studio was built.

History

Edgeborough was established in 1906 in Guildford as a small, privately owned boarding school for boys. It moved to its present site in Frensham in 1939. It became a charitable trust in 1966, and co-education was introduced in 1992 when the Pre-Prep and Nursery departments were opened.

Frensham Place, which now houses the school's weekly boarders, was built about 1880. It is an imposing stone building with shaped gables which the school has not had listed. Two cottages by the walled garden area were designed by the architect Edwin Lutyens. Frensham Place was the former home of the Woodroffe family, and the house's chapel was the first place of worship for Catholics from Farnham since the Reformation. Local masses were celebrated by the Woodroffe's chaplain Father Gerin, who had come to Farnham in 1888 to escape persecution in France.

The building was also the former home of the newspaper proprietor and magnate Sir Cyril Arthur Pearson, the founder of the Daily Express. Pearson died at the house after hitting his head on the bath tap. The contents of the house, including all Pearson's furniture and pictures, were put up for sale in 1913.

Frensham Place was also the birthplace of Count Antonie Seilern, one of the most noted art collectors of the twentieth century. He was born at the house on 17 September 1901, the son of an Austrian nobleman Count Carl Seilern and his American wife Antoinette Woerishoffer.

During World War II the school was requisitioned by the army, and housed a contingent of Māori from New Zealand. A local resident recalls that the driveway was guarded by sentries carrying rifles and the quiet country roads were often filled with convoys of heavy vehicles and marching men.

Notable alumni