Sandroyd School is an independent co-educational preparatory school for day and boarding pupils aged 2 to 13 in the south of Wiltshire, England. The school's main building is Rushmore House, a 19th-century country house which is surrounded by the Rushmore Estate, now playing fields, woods and parkland. Sandroyd School was originally established by Louis Herbert Wellesley Wesley.
In the latest Independent Schools Inspectorate report carried out in 2023, Sandroyd School was judged as 'excellent' across all areas.
Location The school is in the south of Berwick St John parish, near the village of Tollard Royal and the county border with Dorset.
History Sandroyd School was founded as a school for boys by L. H. Wellesley Wesley at Sandroyd House, Fairmile, in Cobham, Surrey in 1880. He was a great-grandson of Charles Wesley.The Sunday Magazine (Strahan & Company, 1869), p. 263
In 1939, in anticipation of the Second World War, the school moved to Rushmore House, home of the Pitt-Rivers family. The house lies in the centre of Cranborne Chase on the borders of Wiltshire and Dorset. A link between the two sites is that Sandroyd House was built in 1860 for the pre-Raphaelite painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope by the architect Philip Webb (1831–1915), the friend of William Morris, and it was Webb who remodelled the interior of Rushmore for General Pitt Rivers twenty years later.
In the 1960s the school purchased the freehold of the school site. In 1995 the school started to accept day pupils, and in 2004 it became coeducational.
Nursery and pre-prep school Sandroyd School has a pre-prep and nursery which was opened in 2004, for children aged two to seven. This was described as 'excellent' in an ISI inspection report of 2023.
List of headmasters 1880–1898: L. H. Wellesley Wesley 1898–1920: C. P. Wilson 1920–1931: W. M. Hornby 1931–1955: H. ff. Ozanne 1955–1963: K. B. Buckland 1963–1981: D. C. Howes 1981–1982: T. R. Reynolds (acting) 1982–1994: D. J. Cann 1994–1995: T. R. Reynolds (acting) 1995–2003: M. J. Hatch 2003–2016: M. J. S. Harris 2016–2025: A. B. Speers 2025-: S. L. Segrave
Old Sandroydians See also People educated at Sandroyd School
Former pupils, known as Old Sandroydians, include: Anthony Eden, Prime Minister Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury Peter II, King of Yugoslavia Faisal II, King of Iraq Peter Carington, politician John Whittingdale, politician Anthony Meyer, politician Ian Gow, politician Tim Sainsbury, politician and businessman John Sainsbury, businessman Alistair McAlpine, businessman and adviser to Margaret Thatcher Randolph Churchill, politician and son of Winston Churchill Antony Armstrong-Jones, photographer and husband of Princess Margaret Terence Rattigan, playwright Wynne Godley, economist Michael Dummett, philosopher Christopher Hawkes, archaeologist Gladwyn Jebb, diplomat Charles Madden, admiral Antony Read, general Ranulph Fiennes, explorer Justin Packshaw, explorer
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