Downe House School is a selective independent girls' day and boarding school in Cold Ash, a village near Newbury, Berkshire, for girls aged 11-18.
The Good Schools Guide described Downe House as an "Archetypal traditional girls' full boarding school turning out delightful, principled, courteous and able girls who go on to make a significant contribution to the world".
Video Downe House School
History
Downe House was founded in 1907 by Olive Willis, its first headmistress, as an all-girls' boarding school. Its first home was Down House in the village of Downe, Kent (now part of the London Borough of Bromley), which had been the home of Charles Darwin.
By 1921 Down House was too small for the school, so Willis bought The Cloisters, Cold Ash, Berkshire, to which the school moved in 1922, and where it remains. It now accepts day pupils but is still predominantly a boarding school.
In 2005, Downe House was one of fifty of the country's leading independent schools which were found guilty of running an illegal price-fixing cartel, exposed by The Times, which had allowed them to drive up fees for thousands of parents. Each school was required to pay a nominal penalty of £10,000 and all agreed to make ex-gratia payments totalling three million pounds into a trust designed to benefit pupils who attended the schools during the period in respect of which fee information was shared. However, Jean Scott, the head of the Independent Schools Council, said that independent schools had always been exempt from anti-cartel rules applied to business, were following a long-established procedure in sharing the information with each other, and that they were unaware of the change to the law (on which they had not been consulted). She wrote to John Vickers, the OFT director-general, saying, "They are not a group of businessmen meeting behind closed doors to fix the price of their products to the disadvantage of the consumer. They are schools that have quite openly continued to follow a long-established practice because they were unaware that the law had changed."
Downe House won Tatler's "Best Public School" award in 2011.
Maps Downe House School
Houses
As most girls at Downe House are boarders, the house system is incorporated with the boarding programme. Every girl belongs to a mixed age house (AGN, AGS, Aisholt, Holcombe or Tedworth) throughout their time at the school. Students, however, only live in the mixed age houses from U4-U5 (Years 9-11).
The houses are:
- Hill (ages 11-12)
- Hermitage (ages 11-12)
- Darwin (ages 11-13)
- AGN (ages 13-16)
- AGS (ages 13-16)
- Aisholt (ages 13-16)
- Holcombe (ages 13-16)
- Tedworth (ages 13-16)
- Willis (ages 16-18)
- York (ages 16-18)
Admissions
Downe House educates girls between the ages of eleven and eighteen, taking them from the last years of junior school through to the sixth form. Girls can join the school at the ages of eleven, twelve, or thirteen, on leaving a primary or prep school, or at sixteen after completing GCSEs. The biggest intake of girls is at 11+.
Entry into Downe House is competitive, with entrants needing to pass the Common Entrance Examination.
Curriculum
The core subjects at Downe House are English, Mathematics and Science as well as Humanities, Classics and Social Sciences subjects and there are options such as Fine Arts, Foreign Languages and Business Studies.
In 2010, the Cambridge Pre-U was introduced as an alternative to A Levels at Downe House.
Houses
For the first two years, pupils are split between three lower school boarding houses: Hill, Hermitage and Darwin. They then move on to their mixed aged houses in their third year, the houses being AGS, AGN, Aisholt, Tedworth and Holcombe. The final two years of sixth form are spent in either Willis or York house, as the houses alternate between year groups. The five mixed age houses are used for inter-house competitions such as House Drama, House Music, House Dance and Sports Day.
Notable former pupils
- Margaret Aston, Medieval historian
- Clare Balding, BBC sports presenter
- Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), novelist and short story writer
- Angie Bray, Conservative Party politician and former MP
- Venetia Burney, granddaughter of Falconer Madan and who named Pluto
- Constance Collier, actress and writer
- Hermione Corfield, actress
- Sophie Dahl, model and author; daughter of Tessa Dahl
- Tessa Dahl, daughter of Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal
- June Eric-Udorie, journalist
- Susannah Fiennes, artist
- Valerie Finnis, Lady Scott (1924-2006), gardener and Victoria Medal of Honour recipient
- Amaryllis Fleming (1926-1999), cellist
- Rosie Fortescue, star of E4's Made in Chelsea
- Aileen Fox, archaeologist
- Prudence Glynn, fashion journalist and writer
- Valerie Goulding, member of Seanad Éireann
- Miranda Hart, comedian and actress
- Aletha Hayter (1911-2006), author and British Council representative
- Geraldine James, actress
- Kristin Linklater, vocal coach
- HRH The Duchess of Cambridge, née Catherine Middleton
- Philippa "Pippa" Middleton, socialite, columnist and sister of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge
- Mary Midgley, philosopher
- Flora Montgomery, actress
- Dame Rosemary Murray, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University and founder of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge
- Priscilla Napier (1908-1998), author
- Anne Patricia Phillips, (née Tiarks), mother-in-law of Princess Anne
- Betty Rea (1904-1965), sculptor and educationist
- Audrey Richards (1899-1984), social anthropologist
- Anne Ridler (1912-2001), poet
- Daisy Robbins, star of E4's Made in Chelsea
- Evelyn Rothwell, oboist
- Georgina Rylance, actress
- Laura Solon, comedian
- Rosie Tapner, model
- Louise Thompson, star of E4's Made in Chelsea
- Lena Townsend, Conservative Party politician
- Edith Holt Whetham, agricultural historian and economist
- Lady Gabriella Windsor, journalist and daughter of Prince Michael of Kent
Notes
Bibliography
- Atkins, Hedley (1976). "Downe House School". Down: the Home of the Darwins: the story of a house and the people who lived there (2nd ed.). [Chichester]: Phillimore. pp. 106-110. ISBN 0-85033-231-1.
- Bowen, Elizabeth (1950). "The Mulberry Tree". Collected Impressions. London: Longmans Green and Co. pp. 185-194. (Describes life at Downe House during World War I)
- Horsler, Val; Kingsland, Jenny (2006). Downe House: a Mystery and a Miracle. London: Third Millennium Publishing. ISBN 978-1-903942-50-5.
- Ridler, Anne (1967). Olive Willis and Downe House: an adventure in education. London: John Murray. At openlibrary.org
External links
- School website
- Profile on the ISC website
Source of article : Wikipedia
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