When you walk onto the grounds of Pangbourne College, there’s something quietly striking about it. The school is not like most English boarding schools because it is spread out over 230 acres in the Berkshire hills, which are in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. You can’t deny that the view is nice. There are hills and old stone buildings, and it looks like you’re in the English countryside, where history is all around you. But the students dressed as sailors make you stop in your tracks. The shoulder is slid on by a crisp, pressed rank. In the morning of Tuesday. That fact almost tells you everything you need to know about the spot.
Sir Thomas Lane Devitt, a baronet with ties to the Devitt and Moore shipping line, started Pangbourne in 1917. This was during a time when Britain was losing a lot at sea because of unrestricted German submarine warfare. His goal was useful: to teach boys how to work in the Merchant Navy. He also wanted them to learn a lot of different things in case they changed their minds about living at sea. Since then, that instinct—a mix of practical ambition and a more humanistic drive—has shaped the school.
It was called The Nautical College, Pangbourne for many years. The kids were cadets. As a captain superintendent, the headmaster was in charge of everything. Up to the O Level, sailors learned how to fight and find their way. The Royal Naval Reserve officially recognized all of the students who were enrolled. In its early years, it felt more like a maritime academy than an English prep school.
In 1969, things changed. For years, the number of young men wanting to work at sea had been going down. Similar schools like HMS Worcester and HMS Conway had already closed or were about to. It changed and became known as a normal independent school, but Pangbourne kept the things that made it unique. The naval uniform stayed. The words used changed too: students slept in “cabins,” hung out in “gunrooms,” and ate from “galleys.” The boarding houses are called “divisions,” and each one is named after a ship that Devitt and Moore used to run. It’s possible for a school that uses so much nautical language to feel over the top and even a little precious. It doesn’t. It doesn’t feel like a costume; it feels like a real culture.
Today, Pangbourne has about 400 students, about half of whom live on campus. The students’ ages range from 11 to 18. In 1996, it opened to both boys and girls. Most people say that this made the school stronger. A group called the Independent Schools Inspectorate went there in 2019 and gave it a “excellent” rating in all nine of its categories. This is a rare accomplishment for a school. There are seven parades a year and on Remembrance Sunday, a marching band plays through the village. The Good Schools Guide calls it “family-oriented” and “buzzes with activity,” which seems about right.
By any measure, the rowing program is the best. There have been four times that Pangbourne’s Boat Club has won the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta. That’s a lot of people for a school this size. Rugby is also strong. The first XV often makes it to the finals of national competitions, and since 2013, there has been a formal link to London Irish’s academy program.
The Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel is another strange building on campus. It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in March 2000 and was meant to look like the hull of a ship as a nod to the school’s history. It remembers all the people who died in the Falklands War of 1982. The link is real; 45 people from Old Pangbournian served in that war. More than a third were given awards or were mentioned in letters. The chapel is not just a school memorial; it serves the whole country. On the 25th anniversary of the Argentine surrender, Queen Elizabeth, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and high-ranking military officials all went back. In 2017, to mark its 100th anniversary, the college also got a visit from the queen. This isn’t the kind of visit that normal schools get.
The main thing that Pangbourne seems to make is a certain type of person. This person is not at all a naval officer, but they do understand structure, know how to work with others, and have been gently and persistently pushed to reach higher goals than they might have on their own. It seems like the uniform isn’t just a tradition for the sake of tradition. It does something. On the surface, it makes everything equal, but it asks students to stand out through hard work and character.
It’s a good question to ask if that approach works for all teens. Not every 13-year-old wants to march. Those who do well here, though, seem to be changed in a way that lasts long after they graduate.
