Caterham today is the product of a co-ed merger between the Congregational School (formally renamed 'Caterham' in the mid-1920s) for boys and Eothen School for girls. [23]
The Congregational School ('Caterham')
Rev. John Townsend, the minister of the Jamaica Row Chapel at Bermondsey, founded the Congregational School in 1811 at 29 West Square, in Newington, London. The year before he had written to "ministers, officers and all other members and friends" of Congregationalist churches in England to share his concerns about the inadequate standard of education available to their sons. [24] The abolitionist politician and philanthropist William Wilberforce was an early governor of the school until his death in 1833. [25]
In 1815, the school moved to a country house in Lewisham, then a rural village on the outskirts of London. Rev. William J. Hope, the Headmaster from 1823 to 1852, was a close lifelong friend of the historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. Hope met Carlyle when they were at school together at Annan Academy before both going to the University of Edinburgh. Though it is possible that Carlyle visited Hope at the school, it would only have been on an informal basis and so there is no record. Carlyle was greatly upset by Hope's death in 1853, which he described as a "mournful complexity of ill news". [26]
One of the earliest school photographs dates to around 1865 and depicts pupils at Lewisham with cricket bats. [27]
Nigel Watson notes that, somewhat unusually for the period, Thomas Rudd - Headmaster from 1859 to 1894 - disapproved of corporal punishment, writing that "I can do better without it". During his tenure of 35 years, Rudd also strengthened the Old Boy network at the school, which contributed to the creation of the Old Caterhamians' London club being established in 1899. [28]
The school was at Lewisham for nearly seventy years, during which time it gained prominence. Samuel Morley, an abolitionist political radical and MP for Bristol was made Treasurer of the school from 1868. William Ewart Gladstone distributed Speech Day prizes to pupils of the school in 1875, the year after his first term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. [29]
The removal of the school from Lewisham was decided for a number of reasons. A key concern was the increasing urbanisation and industrialisation around the school, accelerated from 1858 onwards with the arrival of the East Kent Railway, later the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. [30]
The architect Edward Cooksworthy Robins FRIBA was known for designing educational buildings and was commissioned to design the new school at the present location in Caterham Valley. This was on the site of Withernden, which had been purchased by the school in 1882. Withernden House later became Headmaster's House and its formal garden became the Headmaster's Garden. Robins designed Caterham at the beginning of the Arts-and-Crafts movement and some of his interiors - particularly the floral stained glass within the Wilberforce Hall - are early examples of it. [31] Morley laid the foundation stone in October 1883 and the building opened in 1884. Hugh Stafford notes that Caterham's original 1884 science laboratory - which no longer exists - was among the earliest in public schools. [32] The building at its opening therefore demonstrated the onset of a new curriculum. Sir James Whitehead, then the Lord Mayor of London, opened the swimming bath at Caterham in 1889. [33] In 1890, Caterham School opened its doors to the sons of laymen and to day boys. [31]
In 1899, Old Caterhamians formed a London gentleman's club at premises on Southampton Row (off Russell Square) in Bloomsbury. Dinners, however, were taken at Holborn. It was open each Friday to a network of Old Cats living and working in London and served a circle of important Old Caterhamians in the early 20th century such as Sir John Richard Robinson, editor of the The Daily News and Sir Paul Dukes, who would later be recruited by Mansfield Smith-Cumming into the infant MI6. [34] The club also welcomed well-known visitors such as the cartoonist Sir Francis Carruthers Gould. Originally the club was separate from Caterham, but in 1901, it was amalgamated with the Old Caterhamians' Association. The club continued at the same address in Bloomsbury - though albeit eventually with irregular openings - until 1968. [35]
E.C. Robins design for Caterham, an original engraving of which is held within the Wellcome Collection.
[36] Headmaster's House is on the far left.
Samuel Morley MP (1809–1886), the political radical and
abolitionist illustrated satirically here in
Vanity Fair, was once the Chair of Caterham. He laid the foundation stone for E.C. Robins' building on 23 October 1883.
[4] Sir James Whitehead, 1st Baronet (1834-1917),
Lord Mayor or London, opened the swimming bath at Caterham in 1889, the same year of this caricature from
Vanity Fair.
[33] Bloomsbury's
Southampton Row, where Old Caterhamians established a
club at premises in a building there in 1899 which lasted until 1968. The building has since been demolished.
[35]
In February 1917, the composer Sir Henry Walford Davies (later Master of the King's Music) visited Caterham to deliver a musical lecture and workshop. He discussed his recent experience in organising concerts for soldiers fighting on the Western Front. [37] During the First World War, 69 Old Caterhamians were killed. Caterham commissioned the President of the Royal Society of Sculptors, Sir William Reynolds-Stephens, to sculpt a memorial tablet which was installed into the vestibule in 1923. [38] In addition to this, to school ran an architectural competition for its Memorial Hall (now housing the Maggs Library), adjudicated by Stanley Hamp FRIBA. The architect, artist and Old Caterhamian Walter Monckton Keesey OBE won the competition and in 1924, exhibited an elevation of the building at the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House. Caterham's Memorial Hall was opened in 1925 by William Hulme Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme. [39]
In 1922, Caterham held its first biennial Science Exhibition in the dining hall, now the Wilberforce Hall. This was opened as a temporary museum to the wider community to showcase recent discoveries of the day. In 1924, exhibits included the Autochrome Lumière, Geissler tubes, a cloud chamber (particle detector) designed by C.T.R. Wilson and an aquarium of axolotl which used an early electric aerator. A major engineering interest of the day was the in quickly developing motor-car and motorbike industry, and Caterham collaborated with manufacturers J. A. Prestwich, Triumph and Sturney Archer to create a display of engines and gearboxes. Caterham was loaned exhibition apparati from the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company (which supplied the University of Cambridge) and Taylor Hobson. Such a university-level scientific focus was unique among public schools at the time. [8]
In March 1926, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams visited Caterham to watch a performance of a condensed version of his two-act opera 'Hugh the Drover', premiered in 1924. Caterham's production was prominent enough for the 'The Times' to report on it: Vaughan Williams was said to be moved and afterwards believed "that the sincerity of the whole performance had shown him the points at which the music itself lacked sincerity". [40] He went on to revise the opera throughout his life.
In 1934, the historian D.G.E. Hall was made Headmaster and resided at Headmaster's House at Caterham. There, in addition to his role, he researched and wrote ' Europe and Burma: A study of European Relations with Burma to the Annexation of Thibaw's Kingdom,1886 which was published in 1945. [41] The bass vocalist Robert Easton was invited to the school in January 1939 following his lead in the Royal Albert Hall debut of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music and gave a concert which took place in what is now Caterham's Rudd Hall, then newly-built. [42]
In 1985, the pianist Peter Katin visited Caterham to present a piano recital at the Memorial Hall, now the Maggs Library. He is reported to have disliked Caterham's antique Steinway and so the school arranged to have it replaced to his liking in time for his next recital there in 1987. [10]
Eothen
In 1995, after 184 years as a boys' day and boarding school, it merged with Eothen School for girls (founded by the Misses Pye in 1892) to become a co-educational school. Girls had been admitted to the sixth form education since 1981, but the merger integrated the schools and enabled co-education to be offered to pupils aged 3 years and upward. Upon merger, the school adopted the motto of Eothen School [43] - prior to this merger, the motto was "Omnia Vinces Perseverando" ("Thou shalt overcome everything through perseverance"). [44]
2011 marked two centuries since the founding of Caterham. In October 2011, the bicentenary service was held at Westminster Abbey and conducted by the Dean of Westminster, Dr John Hall. The bicentenary banner used in the service is now housed in Caterham's Wilberforce Hall. Over 2000 people were invited to the service. [45]
In February 2012, HRH Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, visited Caterham to meet the Headmaster Julian Thomas and Head Boy and Head Girl. He opened the school's redeveloped Leathem Pavilion and reviewed the CCF. [46]
In 2023, Caterham was awarded 'Best Independent School of the Year' in the United Kingdom by the Times Educational Supplement. [47] In the same year, it was the first and only school in the UK to receive three 'Key Areas of Strength' in its latest ISI inspection. [48] It is also an 'Apple Distinguished School'. [49]
In August 2025, The Times reported that Caterham achieved the highest percentage of GCSE grade 9s across all co-ed private schools in Surrey and Kent, placing it sixth in the UK. [50]
In September 2025, along with Eton, Brighton, Canford and Gresham's, Caterham was shortlisted for the 2026 Tatler Schools Guide Awards for the title of best public school in the country. [51]
