Bedales School is a

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to t ...

, boarding and day independent school in the village of Steep, near the

market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural ...

Petersfield Petersfield is a market town and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is north of Portsmouth. The town has its own railway station on the Portsmouth Direct line, the mainline rail link connecting Portsmouth a ...

in Hampshire, England. It was founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley in reaction to the limitations of conventional Victorian schools and has been co-educational since 1898. Since 1900 the school has been on an estate in the village of Steep, near

, Hampshire. As well as playing fields, orchards, woodland, pasture and a nature reserve, the campus also has two Grade I listed arts and crafts buildings designed by

Ernest Gimson Ernest William Gimson (; 21 December 1864 – 12 August 1919) was an English furniture designer and architect. Gimson was described by the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the greatest of the English architect-designers". Today his reputati ...

, the Lupton Hall (1911), which was co-designed, built and largely financed by ex-pupil Geoffrey Lupton, and the Memorial Library (1921). There are also three contemporary award-winning buildings: the Olivier Theatre (1997) designed by

Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (also known as FCBStudios) is a British architectural design firm, established in 1978, with offices in Bath, London, Manchester, Belfast and Edinburgh. The firm is known for its pioneering work in sustainable desig ...

, the Orchard Building (2005) by Walters & Cohen and the Art and Design Building (2017) also by

History

The school was started in 1893 by John H Badley and Oswald B Powell after they had been introduced to each other by Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, whom they both knew from their Cambridge days. Their wives, Amy Badley and Winifred Powell were an essential part of the team. A house called Bedales was rented just outside Lindfield, near Haywards Heath. In 1899 Badley and Powell (the latter borrowing heavily from his father, the Vicar of Bisham) purchased a

country estate An estate is a large parcel of land under single ownership, which would historically generate income for its owner. British context In the UK, historically an estate comprises the houses, outbuildings, supporting farmland, and woods that s ...

near Steep and constructed a purpose-built school, including state-of-the-art electric lighting, which opened in 1900. The site has been extensively developed over the past century, including the relocation of a number of historic vernacular

timber frame Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...

barns. A preparatory school, Dunhurst, was started in 1902 on Montessori principles (and was visited in 1919 by Dr Montessori herself), and a primary school, Dunannie, was added in the 1950s. Badley took a non-denominational approach to religion and the school has never had a chapel: its relatively secular teaching made it attractive in its early days to non-conformists, agnostics, Quakers, Unitarians and liberal Jews, who formed a significant element of its early intake. The school was also well known and popular in some Cambridge and Fabian intellectual circles with connections to the Wedgwoods, Darwins, Huxleys, and Trevelyans. Books such as ''A quoi tient la supériorité des Anglo-Saxons?'' and ''L'Education nouvelle'' popularised the school on the Continent, leading to a cosmopolitan intake of Russian and other European children in the 1920s. Bedales was originally a small and intimate school: the 1900 buildings were designed for 150 pupils. Under a programme of expansion and modernisation in the 1960s and 1970s under the headmastership of Tim Slack, the senior school grew from 240 pupils in 1966 to 340, thereafter increasing to some 465.

Heads

* 1893–1935 John Haden Badley * 1936–1946 Frederic Alfred Meier * 1946–1962 Hector Beaumont Jacks * 1962–1974 Tim Slack * 1974–1981 Patrick Nobes * 1981–1992 Euan MacAlpine * 1992–1994 Ian Newton * 1994–2001 Alison Willcocks * 2001–2018 Keith Budge * 2018–2021 Magnus Bashaarat * 2021-Present Will Goldsmith

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Footnotes

References

See also Bibliography for John Haden Badley. *''A quoit tient la superiorité des Anglo-Saxons?'' Edmond Demolins *''Bedales School; A School for Boys. Outline of its aims and system'' J H Badley; Cambridge University Press, 1892 *''Notes and suggestions for Those who Join the staff at Bedales School'' J H Badley; Cambridge University Press, 1922. *''Bedales: A Pioneer School'' J H Badley; Methuen, 1923 *''Bedales Since the War'' Geoffrey Crump; Chapman and Hall, 1936 *''English Progressive Schools'' Robert Skidelsky; Penguin, 1969 *''John Haden Badley 1865–1967'' Gyles Brandreth & Sally Henry; Bedales Society, 1967 *''Irregularly Bold: A Study of Bedales School'' James Henderson; Andree Deutsch, 1978. *''The Public School Phenomenon'' Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy; Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1977 *''Bedales 1935–1965 Memories and Reflections of Fifteen Bedalians'' HB Jacks; The Bedales Society, 1978 *''Bedales School – The First Hundred Years'' Roy Wake, Pennie Denton. Haggerston Press, London, 1993

External links

Bedales School

{{Coord, 51, 1, 13, N, 0, 56, 32, W, type:edu_region:GB-HAM, display=title Educational institutions established in 1893 Co-educational boarding schools Grade I listed buildings in Hampshire Independent schools in Hampshire Member schools of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference * Petersfield 1893 establishments in England Boarding schools in Hampshire