Monkton Combe School is a public school (fee-charging boarding and day school), in the village of Monkton Combe near Bath in Somerset, England.
Contents
History
Monkton Combe School was founded in 1868 by the Revd. Francis Pocock, vicar of Monkton Combe and a former curate to the Bishop of Sierra Leone .
Clarendon School for Girls, a former independent girls' school, merged with Monkton Combe School in 1992, at which point Monkton became fully coeducational.
Monkton is a member of the Rugby Group of independent boarding schools in the United Kingdom.
Buildings and grounds
Several of the school's buildings are listed, including the main Senior school block known as The Old Farm, and the part of the Terrace Block known as The Old Vicarage.
The school has extensive grounds at both the Preparatory (prep) and Senior schools. The Senior cricket pitches (Longmead and Landham) are described as 'among the most picturesque in England', regularly featuring in the Wisden Cricket Calendar's ‘loveliest grounds’ lists.
The school has two boathouses, both on the River Avon. The older is on the edge of the Senior school grounds, sitting below the Dundas Aqueduct and is used mainly for junior rowing. In 2014 the school opened a new boathouse in the nearby village of Saltford. Students row as part of the Monkton Combe School Boat Club, with alumni racing under the Monkton Bluefriars club.
Houses
At the Senior school there are three boys houses: Farm, Eddystone and School; and three girls houses: Grange, Clarendon and Nutfield. Each house has both day and boarding pupils. The Prep school has four mixed houses: Howard, Easterfield, Kearns & Jameson, as well as one boarding house (Hatton) which does not come into the main house system.
Achievements and artefacts
Olympic medalists
The school has produced five Olympic rowing medalists. Each represented Great Britain and three won gold medals.
In addition, an OM achieved an Olympic Gold Medal representing Great Britain at men's hockey, while another captained the England Netball Team which won Gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
HMS Magpie
The school has ties to the Royal Navy ship HMS Magpie, a Black Swan-class sloop which was commanded by then Lieutenant-Commander, later Admiral of the Fleet, the Duke of Edinburgh. The ties were established when the ship took the prep school's badge, a magpie (designed by the art mistress, Miss Bulmer), as its ship's emblem.
The ship's bell was presented to the prep School upon its decommissioning. The link is maintained with the current HMS Magpie, a survey ship, which continues to use the magpie emblem.
Marshall Antarctic sled and flag
OM Lieutenant Colonel Eric Marshall, who was surgeon on the 1907 British Antarctic Nimrod Expedition donated a sled and flag used on the expedition to the school, which remained on display for many years. The school sold them at auction in 2018, replacing it with a replica sculpture, ‘Discovery & Endeavour’ which is on display in the inner quadrangle.
Head masters
The following have been head master and/or principal of the school:
1868–1875 Revd F. Pocock
1875–1895 Revd R.G. Bryan
1895–1900 Revd W.E. Bryan
1900–1900 Revd N. Bennett
1900–1926 Revd J.W. Kearns
1926–1946 Revd E. Hayward
1946–1968 D.R. Wigram
1968–1978 R.J. Knight
1978–1990 R.A.C. Meredith
1990–2005 M.J. Cuthbertson
2005–2015 R. Backhouse
2016–2025 C. Wheeler
2025–2025 J. Goodman
2025–present B. Salisbury
Notable masters
Revd. R.W. Ryde, 1866–1909, Classics Master
D. Vaughan-Thomas, 1873–1934, Mathematics & Music Master
A.S. Sellick, 1878–1958, Cricket Master
G.F. Graham Brown, 1891–1942, History Master and former pupil
F. Vallis, 1896–1957, Association Football and Cricket Master
T.M. Watson, 1913–1994, French Master
N.D. Botton, 1954–, History Master
M. Wells, 1979–, Rowing Master
Notable alumni
19th century
George Somes Layard, 1857–1925, barrister, journalist and man of letters
Harry Martindale Speechly, 1866–1951, Canadian doctor
Montague Waldegrave, 5th Baron Radstock, 1867–1953, peer
Count Vladimir Alekseyevich Bobrinsky, 1868–1927, Tsarist politician from the Second to the Fourth Duma
Count Paul Bobrinsky, 1869–1919, Peter's twin and Russian counter-revolutionary
Count Peter Bobrinsky, 1869–1932, Paul's twin and Russian counter-revolutionary
Harry Colt, 1869–1951, widely regarded as the father of golf course architecture
Ernest Crosbie Trench 1869–1960, British civil engineer
Sir Ernest Wills, 3rd Baronet 1869–1958, part-owner of W. D. & H. O. Wills and Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire
Edwyn Bevan 1870–1943, British philosopher and Hellenistic historian
Archibald Kennedy, 4th Marquess of Ailsa 1873–1943, British peer, barrister and soldier
Horatio Powys-Keck, 1873–1952, first class cricketer
Alfred Young 1873–1940, mathematician and inventor of the Young diagram and Young tableau
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Annesley West 1878–1918, recipient of the Victoria Cross for sacrificing his life for his men
Early 20th century
Michael Head, 1900–1976, composer, singer and musical educator
Dr. W. E. Shewell-Cooper, 1900–1982, organic gardening pioneer
Percival Spear, 1901–1982, historian and civil servant in India
Revd. Charles Claxton, 1903–1992, Bishop of Warrington, Blackburn, Lord Spiritual
Revd. Kenneth Mathews, 1906–1992, Dean of St Albans
R. C. Hutchinson, 1907–1976, novelist
David Howard Adeney, 1911–1994, missionary in China and East Asia
Alfred James Broomhall, 1911–1994, historian and medical missionary to China with the China Inland Mission
Charles Sergel, 1911–1980, Olympic rower and medical missionary to Uganda
Revd. Gonville ffrench-Beytagh, 1912–1991, Dean of Johannesburg and anti-apartheid activist.
Major-General John Frost, 1912–1993, leader of airborne forces during the Battle of Arnhem
Colin Butler, 1913–2016, entomologist who first isolated the pheromone
Martyn Cundy, 1913–2005, reforming mathematical educator and academic
Thorley Walters, 1913–1991, actor
Thomas Watson, 1913–1994, first class cricketer
Late 20th century
Professor Sir Robert Lechler, 1951–, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Professor of Immunology at King's College London
John Reed, 1951-, former Archdeacon of Taunton
Julian Colbeck, 1952-, musician and businessman
Professor Mike Cowlishaw, 1953–, programmer and scientist
Howard Milner, 1953–2011, tenor
James Hawkins, 1954-, artist and film-maker
Lord Nigel Biggar 1955-, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford
Chris Anderson, 1957–, Journalist and publisher, Owner of TED and curator of TED Talks.
Stephen Warren, 1957–, Professor of Astrophysics at Imperial College London
John Kiddle, 1958-, Archdeacon of Wandsworth
Sir Charles Farr, 1959–2019, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and Head of the Joint Intelligence Organisation
Lieutenant General Tim Evans, 1962-, former Commander of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps
Steve Williams, 1976–, Olympic rowing champion
Rowley Douglas, 1977-, Olympic coxswain champion
James Frith, 1977-, Member of Parliament for Bury North
21st century
Ben Wells, 2000-, first class cricketer