Sandroyd School is an independent co-educational preparatory school for day and boarding pupils aged 2 to 13 in the south of Wiltshire, England. The school's main building is Rushmore House, a 19th-century country house which is surrounded by the Rushmore Estate, now playing fields, woods and parkland. Sandroyd School was originally established by Louis Herbert Wellesley Wesley.
In the latest Independent Schools Inspectorate report carried out in 2023, Sandroyd School was judged as 'excellent' across all areas.
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Location
The school is in the south of Berwick St John parish, near the village of Tollard Royal and the county border with Dorset.
History
Sandroyd School was founded as a school for boys by L. H. Wellesley Wesley at Sandroyd House, Fairmile, in Cobham, Surrey in 1880. He was a great-grandson of Charles Wesley.
In 1939, in anticipation of the Second World War, the school moved to Rushmore House, home of the Pitt-Rivers family. The house lies in the centre of Cranborne Chase on the borders of Wiltshire and Dorset. A link between the two sites is that Sandroyd House was built in 1860 for the pre-Raphaelite painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope by the architect Philip Webb (1831–1915), the friend of William Morris, and it was Webb who remodelled the interior of Rushmore for General Pitt Rivers twenty years later.
In the 1960s the school purchased the freehold of the school site. In 1995 the school started to accept day pupils, and in 2004 it became coeducational.
Nursery and pre-prep school
Sandroyd School has a pre-prep and nursery which was opened in 2004, for children aged two to seven. This was described as 'excellent' in an ISI inspection report of 2023.
List of headmasters
1880–1898: L. H. Wellesley Wesley
1898–1920: C. P. Wilson
1920–1931: W. M. Hornby
1931–1955: H. ff. Ozanne
1955–1963: K. B. Buckland
1963–1981: D. C. Howes
1981–1982: T. R. Reynolds (acting)
1982–1994: D. J. Cann
1994–1995: T. R. Reynolds (acting)
1995–2003: M. J. Hatch
2003–2016: M. J. S. Harris
2016–2025: A. B. Speers
2025-: S. L. Segrave
Old Sandroydians
See also People educated at Sandroyd School
Former pupils, known as Old Sandroydians, include:
Anthony Eden, Prime Minister
Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury
Peter II, King of Yugoslavia
Faisal II, King of Iraq
Peter Carington, politician
John Whittingdale, politician
Anthony Meyer, politician
Ian Gow, politician
Tim Sainsbury, politician and businessman
John Sainsbury, businessman
Alistair McAlpine, businessman and adviser to Margaret Thatcher
Randolph Churchill, politician and son of Winston Churchill
Antony Armstrong-Jones, photographer and husband of Princess Margaret
Terence Rattigan, playwright
Wynne Godley, economist
Michael Dummett, philosopher
Christopher Hawkes, archaeologist
Gladwyn Jebb, diplomat
Charles Madden, admiral