The Abbey School

The school was founded in 1887 by Francis Paget - who later became an Oxford bishop - and named Reading High School, replacing the privately owned Blenheim House Ladies' School. It was located at London Road (in the building which became the Gladstone Club). The Church Schools Company, instrumental in founding the school, felt that Reading, with its growing population reaching 60,000, was in need of a new school. The school aimed to provide high quality education with a Christian ethos at an affordable price. When founded, the school had an enrolment of 40 girls, which steadily increased to 120 by 1902. On 16 March 1905 William Methuen Gordon Ducat, the Archdeacon of Berkshire, laid the…

The Abbey School provides education for girls aged 3 to 18 years. The school is based in the centre of Reading, on Kendrick Road. The current Head is Dr Sarah Tullis. In 2006, the school had just over 1,000 students throughout the school, from Junior to Sixth Form. The school became an International Baccalaureate World School in 2008. Founded in 1887, the school moved to its present site in 1905 the educationalist Baroness Brigstocke, and the historian Lucy Worsley. Around 100 years before the school was founded in 1887, the novelist Jane Austen briefly attended Reading Ladies' Boarding School within the Abbey Gateway, which is commemorated by, and incorporated into, the Abbey School's…