Marlborough College

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Vermont college, see Marlboro College

Marlborough College is a British independent boarding school in the county of Wiltshire, founded in 1843 for the education of the sons of Church of England clergy, although it now accepts both boys and girls of all beliefs. Currently there are just over 800 pupils, approximately one third of whom are girls (Marlborough was, in 1968, the first major English public school to allow girls into the sixth form, setting a trend that many other schools would follow). The College become fully co-educational in 1989. New pupils are admitted at the ages of 13+ ("Shell entry") and 16 (Lower Sixth). The College has also been pioneering in other fields, making a major contribution the School Mathematics Project (from 1961) and initiating the teaching of Business Studies at A level (from 1968); fagging was abolished in the 1920s. In 1963 a groups of boys, led by the future political biographer Ben Pimlott, wrote a book ("Marlborough, an open examination written by the boys") describing life at the school.

Nearly half the pupils in the school take individual music lessons, many on more than one instrument.

Contents

A variety of buildings around Court.
A variety of buildings around Court.
The listed Science Labs
The listed Science Labs

The college is built beside the Mound. This was used as the motte of a castle. No remains of the castle can be seen today. There are speculations that the Mound is actually of much more ancient construction and possibly a similar feature to Silbury Hill. Legend has it that the Mound is the burial site of Merlin and that the name of the town, Marlborough comes from Merlin's Barrow. More plausibly, the name probably derives from the medieval term for chalky ground "marl" - thus "town on chalk".

The main focus of the college is the Court. This is surrounded by buildings in a number of different styles. At the south end is the back of an early 18th century mansion, later converted to a coaching inn which was bought as the first building for the school. Next to it are the old stables, now converted into boarding houses. The west side consists of the 1960s red brick dining hall, which boasts the largest unsupported roof in the country, and a Victorian boarding house now converted to other purposes. The north west corner is dominated by its Victorian Gothic style chapel which has an interesting collection of pre-Raphaelite style paintings by J R Spencer Stanhope and stained glass by William Morris. The rest of the Court is surrounded by Victorian buildings in styles ranging from mock Tudor to Victorian prison.

On the other side of the Mound is the Science laboratory, built in 1933 and designed to look like an ocean liner. It is an early example of shuttered concrete construction and was listed as a building of architectural significance in 1970.

Pupils are assigned to various Houses on entering the school. These are where they live and make their home while at school. The Houses compete against one another in sports, but they are not exclusive and most people have friends from other Houses.

The Houses are divided into In-College Houses which are mostly gathered around the central Court and Out-College Houses which are located around the western side of the town. Unusually, the older In-College Houses were not historically given names but referred to by an alphanumeric title. A reorganisation a few years ago combined some houses and eliminated some of the older numbered Houses. More recently created Houses have been given names reflecting either their location or to commemorate a figure from the school's past.

Boys In-College Girls In-College Mixed Out-College
B1 Elmhurst Turner (In-College)
C1 Mill Mead Cotton
C2 Morris Littlefield
C3 New Court Preshute
Barton Hill - Summerfield

Until 1967, when Turner House and Summerfield became the first all-age houses, all boys entering the school first joined a junior house for three or four terms. There were five out-college junior houses - Priory and Upcot which were both closed in 1967, Barton Hill which became an all-age in-college house in 1974, Hermitage which had closed in 1911 but reopened 1974-77, and Elmhurst which was closed in 1988 and reopened as a girls' house the following year. There were two in-college junior houses (A1 and A2) which shared A house; these were closed in 1989 and reopened as a girls' house renamed Morris House.

At the same time the other senior houses began to take in boys directly from prep schools - Preshute (1970), Cotton (1976), Littlefield (1977) and the in-college houses in 1989. B2 (which had shared B house with B1) and B3 ceased taking in new boys in 1989 and were both closed in 1992.

When the College became fully co-educational in 1989, three girls' houses were opened - Morris, Elmhurst and Mill Mead; New Court was opened in 1991. Morris was moved in 1995 from A house to Field House, which had previously been occupied by B3 and C2. New houses were built to accommodate C3, which had previously shared C house with C1 (in 1989) and C2 (in 1992).

Past pupils are known as Old Marlburians.

  • Chris de Burgh, musician
  • Norman del Mar, conductor
  • Nick Drake, British folk musician
  • Christopher Hooker, oboe player
  • Anthony Powers, composer
  • Nic Rowley, composer, and head of vocals, the Academy of Contemporary Music
  • Crispian Steele-Perkins, trumpeter

v • d • e
Schools in Wiltshire

Comprehensive Schools: Sheldon school | St John's School and Community College

Grammar Schools: South Wilts Grammar School for Girls | Bishop Wordsworth's School

Former Schools: The Old Ride School | Hawtreys

Independent Schools: Avondale School | Kingwell Court Preparatory School | Grittleton House School | La Retraite Swan School | Prior Park Preparatory School

Public Schools: Marlborough College | Dauntsey's School


Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/a/r/Marlborough_College_dfdc.html"
Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.