Embley Park, in Wellow (near

Romsey Romsey ( ) is a historic market town in the county of Hampshire, England. Romsey was home to the 17th-century philosopher and economist William Petty and the 19th-century British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, whose statue has stood in the t ...

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire is ...

), was the family home of

Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale (; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, i ...

from 1825 until her death in 1910. It is also where Florence Nightingale claimed she had received her divine calling from God. It is now the location of Embley, a co-educational independent school for 3-18 year olds. Embley was known as Hampshire Collegiate School until September 2019.

The House

In 1826, Florence Nightingale's father

William Nightingale William Edward Nightingale ( Shore; 15 February 1794 – 5 January 1874) was a noted English Unitarian and the father of Florence Nightingale, "the lady with the lamp". Biography William Nightingale (known also as W.E.N.) was born William Edw ...

purchased Embley Park house for the family to use as a permanent residence with

Lea Hurst Dethick, Lea and Holloway is a civil parish (and, since 1899, an ecclesiastical parish), in the Amber Valley borough of the English county of Derbyshire. The population of the civil parish taken at the 2011 census was 1,027. It is located in ...

being used as a summer residence. The house was the larger of the two and was described as:

a good-sized plain square house of the late Georgian period, the situation warm and sheltered, the gardens very large and exceptionally fine. The shooting was good, London was reasonably near, and Fanny's two married sisters, Mrs Nicholson at Waverley Abbey near Farnham and Mrs Bonham-Carter at Fair Oak, near Winchester, were within easy reach.

Nightingale claimed she had received her first divine calling from God in 1837 at Embley whilst she sat underneath a tree in the grounds. She then stayed there after her return from the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...

for some time before returning for visits whilst living in London. After her death in London in 1910, her body was brought by train back to Romsey and her coffin carried from the station to the church at East Wellow where she is buried.

The school

A school was first established at Embley Park in 1946. Mergers with various other schools followed, resulting in the creation of Hampshire Collegiate School in 2006. The school changed its name to Embley in September 2019. The school is part of the

United Church Schools Trust The United Church Schools Trust (UCST) is a large education charity in the United Kingdom which owns and operates a group of 12 independent schools. The charity is operating under the name United Learning as of 2012. History UCST was founded in ...

References

{{coord, 50, 59, 08, N, 1, 32, 34, W, region:GB-HAM_type:edu_source:dewiki, display=title Buildings and structures in Hampshire