Hill Brow Preparatory School for Boys

Hill Brow Preparatory School for Boys was a small English preparatory school, initially based in Eastbourne, East Sussex, but subsequently relocated to Brent Knoll in Somerset as part of the evacuation of civilians that took place during World War II.

Hill Brow School was restricted to boys-only and never admitted scholarship boys or others funded by the public purse on grounds of academic merit rather than the ability of their parents to pay the fees. The school accepted boys from seven years old until they took their Common Entrance exam at 13. In its later days, it accommodated between 50 and 60 boys, both boarders and day students.

In the 1890s, there was a Hillbrow Boys' Preparatory School in Rugby that was attended by Rupert Brooke from 1897 until mid-1901., however there can have been no connection between the two schools since Hill Brow School first appears in the 1893/4 edition of Pike's Eastbourne Directory located in Bolsover Road in the Meads district of Eastbourne under the headmastership of J.S. Croombe M.A..

The 1901 Eastbourne census records confirms the presence of Hill Brow School at that address and under the same headmastership, together with 13 boys aged between 9 and 14. Over the next 10 years the school doubled in size, with 24 pupils recorded in the 1911 census records but now under the headmastership of Robert Gidley Thornton (aged 42), with its erstwhile head, James Croombe (47) demoted to a position of "Asst. Master".

The next documented record of the school appears in "The Intriguing Story of Saint Christopher's Eastbourne", which records that Hill Brow School remained in Bolsover Road until June 1934 when it moved to buildings that previously housed St. Christopher’s girls' school which had closed in 1932. These buildings in Gaudick Road now form the Hillbrow Campus of Brighton University.

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