Country houses repurposed as private schools: what might be the motivations?

ABSTRACT

This paper is a further exploration of the phenomenon of historic country houses repurposed as private schools. In a previous paper it was shown that 55 English private schools within the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference and the Girls’ Schools Association are partially housed within former country houses. This paper investigates some of the possible motivations for schools choosing to occupy such redundant country houses. There are a number of obvious reasons, such as their availability at low cost with appropriate facilities that could be readily used by the schools, but in some cases, it was found that the country house’s historic associations with arts, culture, and learning were a particular motivation for repurposing into schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Private schools
• country houses
• elite schools
• history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Geoffrey Walford

Geoffrey Walford is Emeritus Professor of Education Policy and Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford.