St. Aubyns Preparatory School
| Established | 1895 |
|---|---|
| Closed | 2013 |
| Type | Preparatory day and boarding |
| Headmaster | Simon Hitchings |
| Chairman of the Governors | The Rt. Hon. Lord Wakeham,PC, DL |
| Founder | C.E.F. Stanford |
| Location |
Rottingdean Brighton East Sussex BN2 7JN England |
| Local authority | Brighton and Hove |
| DfE URN | 114617 Tables |
| Staff | 25 |
| Students | 189 |
| Gender | Co-educational |
| Ages | 3–13 |
| Publication | The Bugle |
| Website | staubynsschoolbrighton |
St. Aubyns School was a co-educational preparatory school in Rottingdean, East Sussex, England, catering for children from the ages of 3 to 13. The school was formally founded in 1895 but has origins in educational establishments founded in the 18th century by the then vicar of Rottingdean, Dr Thomas Hooker.
Although the school was established with an apostrophe in its name, it no longer used it after Spring Term, 1940.
The school was owned and operated by an independent trust until it merged with the larger Cothill Educational Trust in May 2012. Within a year of the merger the Cothill Educational Trust decided to close the school. Despite strenuous efforts by the parents of children at the school to keep it open, and an offer made by Hurstpierpoint College to acquire it, it closed on 7 July 2013.
The Cothill Educational Trust's plans for the 11-acre site of the former school have not been published. Its acquisition of the school and its site and its subsequent decision to close it are to be the subject of a formal complaint to the Charity Commission.
St Aubyns was founded by C. E. F. Stanford in 1895 as a boys' boarding prep school. Stanford had been a housemaster of Kingsgate School in Winchester and moved with his wife, his deputy R. C. V. Lang, a maintenance man and six pupils to start a new school.
The premises which Stanford occupied had been a school for much of the 19th century. Thomas Hooker, Vicar of Rottingdean from 1790s to 1830s, was known as an educator of pupils who lodged with him at the vicarage. He then rented rooms in the former Rottingdean Manor House, and employed a second master as an extension to the school. After his death a school continued and changed hands several times. From 1863 a Mr Hewitt ran Field House School on the site; there Ralph Vaughan Williams and the later Earl Jellicoe were educated. The school was bought in 1887 by two brothers called Mason; they gave the name Rottingdean School to their establishment. They vacated the site in 1894 and moved Rottingdean School to another site in the village. Thus Mr Stanford came upon an empty site when he arrived in 1895.
The school remained in essence unchanged for its first 100 years, with numbers between 60 and 100 pupils for most of that time. A chapel was built in 1912 and dedicated the following year. This records the names of 102 old boys who died in the First and Second World Wars.
The school was privately owned by Stanford who passed it on to Lang who succeeded him as Headmaster in 1919. Lang in turn passed the school on to his successor W. H. Gervis in 1940; one of the other masters, E. K. Webber, had a financial share in the business. The school became a limited company and a charitable trust in 1969.
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