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| Bedales School | |
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| Address | |
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Church Road ,, GU32 2DG England | |
| Information | |
| Type | Privateboarding andday school Public school |
| Motto | Work of Each for Weal of All |
| Established | 1893 |
| Founder | John Haden Badley |
| Department for Education URN | 116527Tables |
| Headmaster | Will Goldsmith |
| Gender | Co-educational |
| Age | 3 to 18 |
| Enrolment | 761 |
| Website | www |
Bedales School is acoeducationalboarding anddaypublic school, in the village ofSteep, near themarket town ofPetersfield inHampshire, England. It was founded in 1893 byAmy Garrett Badley andJohn Haden Badley in reaction to the limitations of conventionalVictorian schools and has been co-educational since 1898.
The school was started in 1893 by Amy Garrett Badley and John Haden Badley. John had met Oswald B Powell when they were introduced to each other byGoldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, whom they both knew from their Cambridge days. John said that Oswald and his wife, Winifred Powell, were as important as Amy and him.[1] A house calledBedales was rented just outsideLindfield, nearHaywards Heath.[1] In 1899 Badley and Powell (the latter borrowing heavily from his father, the Vicar ofBisham) purchased acountry estate 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 historicvernaculartimber frame barns. Apreparatory school, Dunhurst, was started in 1902 onMontessori principles (and was visited in 1919 byMaria Montessori herself), and a primary school, Dunannie, was added in the 1950s.
The Badleys 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 tononconformists, agnostics,Quakers,Unitarians andliberal Jews, who formed a significant element of its early intake. The school was also well known and popular in someCambridge andFabian intellectual circles, with connections to theWedgwoods, Darwins,Huxleys, andTrevelyans. Books such asA quoi tient la supériorité des Anglo-Saxons? andL'Education nouvelle popularised the school onthe 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.
Since 1900 the school has been located on a 120-acre (0.49 km2) estate in the village of Steep, near Petersfield, Hampshire. As well as playing fields, orchards, woodland, pasture, multiple sport pitches and a nature reserve, the campus also has twoGrade I listedarts and crafts buildings designed byErnest Gimson, the Lupton Hall (1911), which was co-designed, built and largely financed by ex-pupilGeoffrey Lupton, and the Memorial Library (1921).[7]
There are three contemporary, award-winning buildings:
See alsoJohn Haden Badley bibliography.
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51°1′13″N0°56′32″W / 51.02028°N 0.94222°W /51.02028; -0.94222
