Bedales School


Bedales School is a co-educational, boarding and day independent school in the village of Steep, near the market town of Petersfield in Hampshire, England. It was founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley in reaction to the limitations of conventional Victorian schools.
Since 1900 the school has been on an estate in the village of Steep, near Petersfield, Hampshire. As well as playing fields, orchards, woodland, pasture and a nature reserve, the campus also boasts two Grade 1 listed arts and crafts buildings designed by Ernest Gimson, the Lupton Hall, which was co-designed, built and largely financed by ex-pupil Geoffrey Lupton, and the Memorial Library. There are also three contemporary award-winning buildings: the Olivier Theatre designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, the Orchard Building by Walters & Cohen and the Art and Design Building also by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.

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 purchased a country estate near Steep and constructed a purpose-built school, including state of the art electric light, 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 barns. A preparatory school, Dunhurst, was started in 1902 on Montessori principles, 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 necessary 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.

Co-education

Bedales has educated boys and girls together since 1898. The school's particular emphasis on arts, crafts and drama can be seen as a direct and deliberate legacy of this early co-education theory, as explained by one of the school's most influential masters, Geoffrey Crump, in his book Bedales Since the War :

Current management

The term 'Bedales Schools' incorporates Bedales itself, as well as Dunhurst and Dunnannie. Since September 2018, Magnus Bashaarat holds the title of 'Head of Bedales Schools', although each of the junior schools has a separate Head as well. His role involves overseeing management and directing the long-term future and ethos of the school.
Bedales School also has a Senior Deputy, Louise Wilson ; a Deputy Head, Rick Cross ; a Deputy Head, Phil Tattersall-King ; a Deputy Head, Ed Mason ; MA Open University; QTS Canterbury Christ Church; MSt Cambridge ); and a Director of Learning and Innovation, Alistair McConville.

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