Our History

Elstree Preparatory School for Boys

1842 to 1939 : also known as Elstree School

Hill House, Elstree Hill South, Elstree

Originally built as a large domestic house and was owned by the Rudge family in 1757.  The land was sold to John Rudge when Boreham Wood Common was affected by the Inclosure Act.  Later, it was used as a boarding school for boys who came from wealthy families until 1939 when the school moved to Woolhampton, Berkshire.  The school house was called Elstree Hill House until the 20th century.  There were extensive playing fields and a cricket pitch situated on the other side of the road.

Hill House from the rear

Elstree boys went on to Eton, Rugby, Oxbridge and mostly Harrow (96 in 1885) and it was considered by some to be the finest preparatory school in England.  No records survive to tell us when it was first used as a school but there is evidence that the Reverend Mr Dalton was the headmaster at Elstree School sometime between 1740 to 1785.  It is also said that in 1798 the headmaster of Elstree School arranged for bells to be rung in honour of Nelson’s victory at the Nile.

In 1842 the house was let to the Rev. Evan Edward Rowsell who had a few pupils and three years later the Rev. Leopold John Bernays took the lease and settled there in 1845.  He was born in 1820, educated at Oxford and became head of Harrow School.  Under his management Elstree School flourished and he soon had seventy five boys, all of whom came from distinguished parents.  The main part of the curriculum was devoted to Classics (Greek & Latin) with some maths, science and french.  Copperplate writing was taught and the boys’ books were inspected and marked every day.  There was a gravel yard with a Fives Court and little or no cricket or football at this time.  After sixteen years Bernays left the school to become Rector of Stanmore Church.

The next head was Rev Thompson Podmore MA in 1861 until 1869.  He too had been educated at Oxford and had been Bernays' partner for ten years.  He lived in Schopwick House in the High Street with some of the pupils as the school house was not large enough to accommodate all of the boys and staff.  He left to become second master at Eastbourne College which in contrast, had nine boys.  Bernays and Podmore initiated cricket at the school but there is no mention of a football match until 1875.  

In 1869 Rev. Lancelot Sanderson MA came from Harrow to take up the management of the school and it was he who developed and expanded it to make it one of the most reputable in the country.  He was born in 1838 and educated at Cambridge.  In 1862 he took Holy Orders and became Curate and Senior Tutor under ex-Master of Harrow, Rev. George Townsend Warner in Torquay, Devon.  In 1864 he was appointed Assistant Master at Harrow with a salary of £300 pa.  That year he married Warner’s daughter Katherine (Kitty) and they subsequently had 16 children, 14 of whom survived.  Their nursemaid was Bessie Gayle.

When Sanderson was appointed head at Elstree he had to pay Podmore £2000 for the goodwill and the school furniture.  He only had £1500 so Dr Butler, head of Harrow, gave him £500 as a gesture of goodwill.  The rent was £350 pa and the boys fees were £35 per term.  For the next thirty one years fifty new boys arrived each year and Lancelot was able to buy the freehold for £6,300 in 1872.  Katherine was very popular and the boys called her Mrs Kitty.  Among her friends was the author John Galsworthy (Forsyte Saga).  The family had property in Scotland where they spent their holidays.

In 1870 the school was extended on the north end.  The ground floor became the big school room with two others, and the floors above were used as dormitories, schoolrooms and offices.  Eighty boys boarded there.  They also boarded at Schopwick House and Old St Mary’s in the High St., Plumstead and The Gable in Barnet Lane, and Elm Lodge in Bushey Heath Rd.  Altogether there were 130 boarders some of whom, in the village houses, slept in attics on mattresses on the floor.  Boys entered the school at eleven or twelve years, some at eight, and left at fourteen.  They drunk beer at lunchtime.  On Sundays they wore Eton suits and black silk top hats to walk to Edgware or Stanmore, four miles away, for worship.

Lancelot bought 300 acres of farmland surrounding the school, installed twenty earth closets, a gymnasium in the yard and built St. Mary’s Sanatorium in the grounds.  This was later used as the masters’ hostel.  Houses were purchased for the masters like The Fortune, a Tudor house at the top of the garden and had once been an inn.  The Fortune was demolished by a German bomb in WWII.  The school had a fifty x twenty five foot swimming pool which was restored with funds given by Samuel Peto father of pupil, Basil.  The pool was filled with water carried by the boys from a well.  Mains supply came in 1876.

Chapel Exterior

Chapel Interior

In 1870 Sanderson erected a wooden chapel which was later bought by the Earl of Devon in 1874.  In 1875 Sir Arthur Blomfield was commissioned to build a red brick chapel in the sports field.  It could hold 250 people and was built in the Gothic style with stained glass windows, one of which was designed by C E Kempe.  The foundation stone was laid by Dr Butler and it opened in 1877.  Although it was situated a few hundred yards into the Diocese of London, it was mainly used by the Bishop of St Albans for confirmations.  It is said that this was because the two bishops concerned played the chapel for a game of golf and St Albans won.

Lancelot recruited masters with cricket and football Blues and in the summer, bowling professionals from Lord’s Cricket Ground.  Sportswear was white plus four breeches and white stockings.  There were two tennis courts where sports colours were white and cherry.  Arthur Dunn, master 1885 to 1891, had a strong influence on football.  He played for England and later founded Ludgrove and had a cup named after him.  Pupil Archie Maclaren was top cricketer and played for Elstree against Eton at Lords.  His first appearance was at the age of 14.  He became captain of Elstree, Harrow, Lancashire and England.
 
Teachers included W N Roe MA ‘master of the modern side’ and Rev. Vernon Royle MA as bursar 1879, and then second Master, 1885.  Sanderson’s health began to deteriorate and he made Royle his partner.  Royle married Eleanor Agnes Sanderson, daughter of Lancelot’s elder brother John, manager of the Bank of Lancaster.  They lived at Schopwick house with fifteen boarders and had four sons.  In 1901 Royle and Lancelot had a disagreement and Royle left to start his own school in Stanmore Park taking with him eighty boys, thus leaving twenty five at Elstree.

The school was in debt for £20,000; Lancelot had spent £40,000 on it in thirty years.  Land and houses had to be sold off to pay the debts leaving twenty five acres and the school buildings.  He retired in 1901 and died 1904.  He was buried in the Chapel cemetery and was joined by Kitty in 1921.  After the school moved to Berkshire the Chapel fell into disrepair and eventually in 1956, it was demolished.  Three burials and six cremations were moved to St Nicholas Church including Lancelot and Kitty where their gravestone remains.

The next head was second Master Rev Edgar Stogdon MA.  He was ex-Harrow and Cambridge and appointed by Lancelot’s eldest son, Edward, who was in South Africa.  Stogdon left in 1903 to become Assistant Master at Harrow.  No records are to hand of school life in his time at Elstree.

In 1903 Rev. Franklyn de Winton Lushington became the head.  He had been Assistant Master at Elstree 1892-1899.  Born in 1868 he was educated at Cambridge and ordained a priest in 1894.  In 1899 he married Monica, eldest daughter of Lancelot and had a daughter, Evelyn in 1906.  He became Archdeacon of Malta and wrote a book, Sermons for Young Boys, which had royal patronage.  He was a member of the Free Foresters Cricket Club and the Harlequins Rugby Football Club.

At first he had only two assistant masters: T C Weatherhead who left in 1905 as Head of the Choir School, Kings College, Cambridge, and W G Byron Harker BA, who was lame through a trolley bus injury, retired to Seaford 1934.  

In 1904 Lushington caused a subway to be constructed under the road linking the sports field to the school.  This was because the High Street was becoming busy with traffic.  It is said that one of the pupils was killed crossing the road and a benefactor or parents paid for the tunnel, but this is unverified. In 1905 other teachers were appointed.  L C V Bathhurst BA - 1908, J F Morris BA - 1908, W McG Hemingway BA - 1909, R E Everitt - 1908.  In 1906, Rev. N V Ridgeway BA - 1907 (married Agnes Sanderson in 1908), 1907 to 1911, P R May a Cambridge Blue in cricket and football, became a planter in Ceylon.  1908 to 1910 R F Bailey, 1908 to 1910 Rev. G A Scott.

School numbers rose to seventy four in 1907.  In 1908 Lushington went into partnership with Rev. George Scott who lived in St. Mary’s at the top of the garden.  St Mary’s was later damaged by the same bomb that destroyed the Fortune and it became uninhabitable.  Scott left in 1910 to start his own school in Bexhill.

Lushington changed the rules.  Eton jackets were worn only for best and Sundays.  Weekday wear in the winter was grey tweed knickerbockers suits with Eton collars, boots and stockings and in summer, grey flannel suits with long trousers and wide floppy hats; on Sundays straw hats.  Pink flannel caps were worn but only in the yard or on the playing field.  The school hours were long, the last lesson at 8.15pm, and there was weekend homework.  The younger boys went to bed at 7.30pm.  Visitors took the boys to tea in The Plough Inn or at the bakers on rare occasions.  Sergeant Portsmouth was in charge of the sports wear and sold laces at 1d.  Leather laces cost 3d. and this included a feel of a musket ball shot into his arm in Burma in 1852.  Cricket and football flourished.

The staff in 1911

Lushington was offered the Headmastership of Dover College in 1910 and left the school.  In 1911 Edward Lancelot Sanderson returned from Africa and took up the Headship at Elstree.  He was born in 1867 and entered the school as a pupil aged seven.  At thirteen he went to Harrow then to Cambridge at seventeen.  He did not take holy orders as he suffered ill health and was advised to travel to warmer climes.  In 1893 he sailed with John Galsworthy, by now a family friend, to visit Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa.  He travelled on a clipper, Torrens, whose chief officer was Conrad Korzeniowski, who later became known as Joseph Conrad the author, and they became friends.

John Galsworthy

After travelling, in 1894 and at twenty seven years old, Edward became one of his father’s masters at Elstree.  Two years later he was commissioned into the York Regiment and trained and worked as a teacher.  He joined his family for holidays in Scotland and there he met and married Helen May Watson in 1898.  His best man was John Galsworthy.  They lived in Old St. Mary’s and had three children.  In 1899 he entered the Boer War, was invalided out to Switzerland and then rejoined his regiment in South Africa in 1901.  In 1902 he was offered the headship of a High School for boys in Johannesburg, and then town clerk of Nairobi before returning home.

When he took the headmastership of Elstree he had to borrow £3,000 from his in-laws to buy the goodwill and the furniture.  There was also a £12,000 mortgage.  His father had left the school to all of his fourteen children, so Edward had to buy them out also.  It took twenty four years to pay off the mortgage.  In 1911 there were forty six boys but this soon rose to eighty four.  The fee had remained at 120 guineas p.a. for 30 years and in 1920 Edward raised them to 180 guineas.

He abolished the top hats and Eton collars.  Central heating replaced the coal fires, and electricity was installed in 1925.  In 1928 a large villa near the school was bought for use as a sanatorium.

Sergeant Instructor Stubbs, 1906-1932, cycled from London two or three days a week to take gym, boxing and Swedish drill.  In 1932 he suffered a stroke after attempting to rescue a swimmer at the seaside.  Miss Rosa Hart, 1911 to 1913, was the first female mistress.  There was not another until 1932, as females could not take games.  R T Gladstone, 1911 to 1915, took Classics and English.  His brother A L Gladstone taught also.  In 1908 Mr. Marchant (Mitch) was the school carpenter and then a butler.  He had a horse named Mary and together they mowed the school cricket pitch.  He retired in 1962.

In 1913 Henry Broughham was taken into partnership but he was invalided from France in 1917 and died of his wounds soon after.  During WW1 staff were over military age or unfit for service.  1915 to 1925 R W Beeson, 1915 to 1919 Rev. C R N Blakiston, G H Hamilton, 1916 to 1934 J M Christie.

In 1900 Mr. Woodgate was the head gardener.  He also acted as chapel warden, swimming pool attendant, and looked after the gas and water supplies.  He was also the captain of Elstree Fire Brigade and the engine was kept at the school.  He retired to Fleet as a greengrocer in 1938.  His wife was called ‘Mother’ and was the cook from 1900-1935.  During the war she complained of running out of sugar so the head went off to Whitehall to see the Sergeant Controller, an old pupil, who immediately issued two sacks.  98 Old Boys died in WW1 and their names were inscribed in the chapel.

Some staff facts:  1921 to 1949  J F Walmsley took athletics, poetry and literature,  and J Irvine - Classics and English.  1920 to 1927  C Ratcliffe; 1927 to 1937  Rev. Basil Hardy took Maths;  1916 to 1935  Miss H English was the Matron; 1929 to 1934 T B Littlewood was a Master and it was he who introduced Rugby to the school.  The visiting music teacher was Dorothy Davies and she produced concerts and plays.  Examples of these were:  The Rose and the Ring 1920, 1932, The Willow Pattern Story 1923, 1930 and Ali Baba 1928.  

In 1924 the Wolf Cubs was formed and in 1928 Scouts were started by Felix Greenwood, an Old Boy.  A E Wilkins was the carpenter.  In 1925, seven members formed the Old Elstree Club which became the Elstree School Association.  It accumulated 400 members but all records were destroyed in the Blitz of WW2.  

There are no records of domestic staff before 1900 but in 1922 names were recorded.  Altogether, including masters, there were thirty five adults taking care of eighty boys.  Staff employed were:  butler and footman, chauffeur, groundsman, carpenter, stoker, bootman, head gardener and two under gardeners, head cook, eight resident and three non-resident housemaids, housekeeper and secretary, a sister and a matron.  There were eight resident masters.

The staff in 1936

C. Brian Hewitt was a master who served for fifty years.  He joined the school in 1926 and taught Latin and Soccer.  In 1937 he married Miss E D Winterton who had taught ‘voluntary handwork’ in the school from 1933 to 1936.  In the 1930s Daisy Bottle was the head housemaid, laundress and assistant matron.  She married Jim Champion the bootman, boilerman and window cleaner in 1933.  He retired in 1955.

Edward Sanderson retired to Devon in 1931 and his son, Ian, took up the headship.

Ian was born in 1900 and joined his parents in Kenya in 1905.  At the age of seven he returned to Elstree and entered the school eventually becoming Head Boy.  In 1914 he went to Royal Naval College and in 1917 was a midshipman on HMS Malaya at Scapa Flow, Scotland.  A year later, he witnessed the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet.  In 1919 he was posted to HMS Cairo and he travelled world-wide for two years after which he went to Cambridge and then back to the Navy.  In 1928 he married Louisa Constance Mackintosh and they had four children.

In the 1930s the Depression affected the school rolls and numbers fell to sixty five.  Also parents were able to travel further because of motor cars and they began to send their sons into the countryside because Elstree was becoming a suburb.  With the threat of war and an increasing population in the area, Ian viewed 30 houses with the intention of moving the school further into the countryside.  It was estimated that the move would cost some £30,000.

Elstree School in Woolhampton House today

Woolhampton House came onto the market in 1939 through the death of its owner, Count Curowski.  His widow wanted to sell the property rather than lease it but the cost was too great.  However, as war loomed, she changed her mind and a lease was drafted on 4th September 1939, the day after World War II was declared.  Back at Elstree, much to the dismay of the staff, the school was occupied without warning on the 5th by army personnel and so the school hurriedly moved out to Woolhampton, opening on 29th September 1939, retaining the name of Elstree School..

During WWII Hill House received some bomb damage.  It became a gun park and the gym, an armoury and there was an assault course on the cricket ground.  It was occupied by several branches of the Forces such as The Welsh Guards, IVth Battalion of the Coldstream Guards, Battalion of the London Irish Regiment, RAF and the WRAF who worked at Bentley Priory in Stanmore.

In 1945 it was de-requisitioned and fell into disrepair.  In 1946 Harrow District Council acquired eight acres of land surrounding the school playing fields for housebuilding and Hill House was sold to the Oliver Borthwick Memorial Trust for unfortunate young men.  The Composers housing estate was built on the playing fields and Hill House is currently a Nursing Home.

Bob Payne’s (primary source Sept. 2000) mother was a governess teaching music in 1900.  Her mother owned the school tuck shop next door and from the profits she bought two houses, for her daughters, in Clarendon Road, Boreham Wood.

St Nicholas Church Parish records: 1959 Sanderson. six caskets buried 26th May 1952 containing ashes of members of the family removed from the former Elstree Prep, School Chapel, now demolished.

Famous old boys :

Air Marshall PB Joubert de la Ferté:  He was the first  airman to fly over the German lines in 1914.
Oliver Schwann:  He was the first Captain of a British dirigible airship.
Jack Churchill 1889-1892:  Winston Churchill’s brother.
Sandy Wilson:  Author of the play, The Boyfriend

Now available from the current Elstree School : Elstree 175 by Hugo Vickers - the story of the school and the Sanderson family over the last 175 years. Click here for more details