Lambrook School has a subtle quality that isn’t immediately apparent. At first glance, it appears to be the kind of English prep school found in a thousand postcards, with rolling grounds, red brick, and the distant sound of kids playing on a pitch. It is situated on 52 acres of rural Berkshire. However, if you spend some time learning about its past, you’ll see that this place has endured more hardships than its serene exterior would indicate.
Robert Burnside established the school in 1860, and it was housed in a country home that had only been constructed seven years prior. Burnside used a single master to oversee the entire operation during those early years. By 1879, there were twenty-one boys, including two of Queen Victoria’s grandsons. Even though the numbers were small, the fact that Prince Christian Victor and Prince Albert of Schleswig-Holstein were receiving their education in those Berkshire classrooms speaks volumes about how quickly Lambrook built its reputation.
To be honest, the next century was filled with near-disasters. After taking over in 1883, Edward Mansfield aggressively expanded the school, nearly doubling its size, but he left the finances in dire straits. Nearly all of the student body left at some point during his tenure due to what records only describe as “a row,” the origin of which is still unknown. The Victorian-era paper trail from the school doesn’t go into detail, and to be honest, the mystery makes it more intriguing. Whatever transpired, it nearly ended Lambrook before it had really started.
When a new leader arrived in 1904, the school had only 35 students, and it began to gradually rebuild. In 1905, a chapel was built. By the 1940s, Westfield, a nearby home, had been absorbed. Then came another financial crisis in 1956, which was caused by death duties following the death of headmaster Archie Forbes. The type of liability that just shuts down schools. If Lambrook hadn’t been reorganized as a charitable trust in 1967, it might have completely vanished. Everything else appears to have changed as a result of that one institutional choice.
Most people agree that the 1970s and 1980s were a truly wonderful time. Tom Clough added a teaching block, squash courts, and an all-weather pitch to the campus. Results in athletics and academics seemed to follow. There’s a feeling that Lambrook developed into the kind of school parents spoke confidently about during those years. Before a merger with Haileybury Junior School in 1997 brought coeducation and new momentum, pushing enrollment toward 200, the early 1990s saw decline once more, with numbers declining and attitudes changing.
Observers perceived the 2009 return to the name Lambrook as a school choosing to reclaim its own identity instead of gaining credibility through a partnership. Whether that instinct was strategic or sentimental is still up for debate. Most likely both.
It’s something quite different that brings Lambrook back into the public eye. This is where Prince George and his siblings, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, received their education—ordinary school days in Berkshire for kids who will never lead ordinary lives. It’s difficult to ignore how intentional that decision was. William and Kate chose a school where their kids could, at least temporarily, just be kids.
In September, George will travel to Eton. When a future king transitions from one chapter to the next, those announcements always carry a certain weight. However, Lambrook provided him with the initial chapters. A school that has been doing that for more than 160 years despite significant obstacles.
