Abbotsholme School is a co-educational

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independe ...

boarding Boarding may refer to: *Boarding, used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals as in a: ** Boarding house **Boarding school *Boarding (horses) (also known as a livery yard, livery stable, or boarding stable), is a stable where ho ...

and

day school A day school — as opposed to a boarding school — is an educational institution where children and adolescents are given instructions during the day, after which the students return to their homes. A day school has full-day programs when comp ...

. The school is situated on a 140-acre campus on the banks of the River Dove in

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the no ...

, England near the county border and the village of

Rocester Rocester is a village and civil parish in the East Staffordshire district of Staffordshire, England. Its name is spelt ''Rowcestre'' in the Domesday Book. It is located on the Derbyshire border. Geography The village is about north of Ut ...

in Staffordshire. It is a member of the SHHIS (Society of Headmasters & Headmistresses of Independent Schools) and is a

Round Square Round Square is an international network of schools, based on the educational concepts of Kurt Hahn, and named after a distinctive building at Gordonstoun. Founded by a group of seven schools in the late 1960s, by 1996 it had grown to 20 membe ...

school.

History

Abbotsholme was founded by Scottish academic and educationist Cecil Reddie as an experiment for his progressive educational philosophies and theories. The school, then known "The New School", opened to boys aged 10 to 19 in 1889. From the very beginning, the school departed from the structure of the traditional public school in favour of a less rigid environment and more liberal education.

Top hat A top hat (also called a high hat, a cylinder hat, or, informally, a topper) is a tall, flat-crowned hat for men traditionally associated with formal wear in Western dress codes, meaning white tie, morning dress, or frock coat. Traditionally m ...

s and " Eton collars" were discarded in favour of a more comfortable and practical uniform, and English, French and German were taught in place of Classics (Latin and Greek). The fine arts were introduced as core subjects, considered unusual at that time, since music and art were mostly taught at cathedral schools or specialist art institutes. Practical skills such as animal husbandry and carpentry were integrated into the curriculum. It has been coeducational since 1969; girls now make up over one third of overall pupil numbers. In 2017 the school was bought by Chinese company Achieve Education Ltd, proprietor Mrs Tong Zhou.

Notable former pupils

* Roger Altounyan – physician and pharmacologist who pioneered the use of sodium cromoglycate as a preventative for asthma * Sir Samuel Phillips Bedson, FRS Professor of

Bacteriology Bacteriology is the branch and specialty of biology that studies the morphology, ecology, genetics and biochemistry of bacteria as well as many other aspects related to them. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classific ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degre ...

* Alan Dower Blumlein, Electronics engineer and inventor * Peter Crossley-Holland, Ethnomusicologist and composer * Robin Gandy, Mathematician * Edward James Martin Koppel, British-born American broadcast journalist, * Alfred Angas Scott (1875-1923), motorcycle designer, inventor and founder of The Scott Motorcycle Company * Ian Shapiro, political scientist * Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950) Novelist and philosopher; author of Last and First Men, Star Maker, and other works of speculative fiction. *

Lytton Strachey Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of '' Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight ...

, British writer and critic * Sir Alan Muir Wood, FRS FREng FICE, Civil Engineer

References

External links

School Website

Profile
on the

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