Woodbridge School

The school was founded in 1577; however, like so many others, it lapsed during the Civil War. In 1662 Robert Marryott, known as ‘the great eater’, hosted a feast for local worthies in Woodbridge which started at the Crown Hotel and finished at the King’s Head in Woodbridge. From this feast came the reincarnation of the school which today enjoys the curious claim of being the only independent school in the country to have been founded in two public houses.

The Free School, Woodbridge, was an expression of the new confidence in England following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Local citizens contributed to the founding of the school in 1662, appointing a schoolmaster on an annual salary of £25 to teach, without charge, ten ‘sons of the meaner sort of the inhabitants of the town’.[1] Additional pupils paid an annual fee of £1.

After a difficult start, including the ravages of the plague in 1666, the School flourished and enjoyed a glorious era in the eighteenth century when the East Anglian gentry enrolled their sons in great numbers. By the mid-nineteenth century, the cramped School building was proving inadequate and in 1861 the school integrated with the Seckford Trust, an almshouse charity, becoming a part beneficiary of an endowment left to the town of Woodbridge in 1587 by Thomas Seckford, Master of the Court of Requests to Queen Elizabeth I.

In 1864 the school moved from the centre of town on the site of the former Augustine Woodbridge Priory to its present site with 45 acres (180,000 m²) of wooded grounds overlooking Woodbridge.[2]

In 1974 the school became fully co-educational and today has 725 pupils.

The school is a co-educational day school with a boarding component. It offers GCSE, IGCSE and AS/A Level examinations. The day pupil body is divided into four houses, Annott, Burwell, Seckford and Willard. There is a boarding house known as School House for pupils in Year 9 to 13. The school is next to the local state school Farlingaye High School. The school's music activities include.[3] a symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra and choral society as well as smaller ensembles. Student musicians have been members of regional and national ensembles including the National Youth Choir of Great Britain. There is a professional theatre, the Seckford Theatre.

The school has playing fields including cricket squares, a heated sports dome with gym facilities, Astro turf for either tennis or hockey, an athletics track, rugby and hockey pitches.

Other sports include sailing (which takes place at Alton Water), riding, basketball, fencing, badminton, football, golf, netball, rowing, swimming, tennis, shooting and windsurfing.

From Year 9 onwards, on a Friday afternoon, students have a choice of joining the Combined Cadet Force (CCF), (Army, Royal Navy or Royal Air Force sections), the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme (or both) or honing their skills in the many different sports, arts, music, and other activities available at Woodbridge.

• Victoria Markland Busby, Director of Protocol and Vice Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

• Vincent Burrough Redstone, 2nd Master and Suffolk Historian, who suggested to Edith Pretty that the Sutton Hoo Ship-burial should be excavated.[4]
• William Henry Balgarnie – inspiration for the character Mr Chips
• Louise Rickard – rugby player
• Michael Troughton – actor

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/victoria-busby

• Weaver M & C (1987) The Seckford Foundation : Four Hundred Years of a Tudor Foundation The Seckford Foundation, Woodbridge. ISBN 0951220306

• Woodbridge School website
• BBC News League Tables Entry
• Profiles on the ISC website – The Abbey prep & Main School
• Historic England. "Details from listed building database (1031103)". National Heritage List for England.