The school was started in 1893 by Amy Garrett Badley and John Haden Badley. John had met Oswald B Powell when they were introduced to each other by
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, whom they both knew from their Cambridge days. John said that Oswald and his wife, Winifred Powell, were as important as Amy and him.[1] A house called Bedales was rented just outside
Lindfield, near
Haywards Heath.[1] In 1899 Badley and Powell (the latter borrowing heavily from his father, the Vicar of
Bisham) purchased a
country estate near Steep and constructed a purpose-built school, including state-of-the-art electric lighting, which opened in 1900. The site has been extensively developed over the past century, including the relocation of a number of historic
vernaculartimber frame barns. A
preparatory school, Dunhurst, was started in 1902 on
Montessori principles (and was visited in 1919 by
Maria Montessori herself), and a primary school, Dunannie, was added in the 1950s.
The Badleys took a non-denominational approach to religion and the school has never had a chapel: its relatively secular teaching made it attractive in its early days to
nonconformists, agnostics,
Quakers,
Unitarians and
liberal Jews, who formed a significant element of its early intake. The school was also well known and popular in some
Cambridge and
Fabian intellectual circles, with connections to the
Wedgwoods, Darwins,
Huxleys, and
Trevelyans. Books such as A quoi tient la supériorité des Anglo-Saxons? and L'Education nouvelle popularised the school on
the Continent, leading to a cosmopolitan intake of Russian and other European children in the 1920s.
Bedales was originally a small and intimate school: the 1900 buildings were designed for 150 pupils. Under a programme of expansion and modernisation in the 1960s and 1970s under the headmastership of Tim Slack, the senior school grew from 240 pupils in 1966 to 340, thereafter increasing to some 465.
Since 1900 the school has been located on a 120-acre (0.49 km2) estate in the village of Steep, near Petersfield, Hampshire. As well as playing fields, orchards, woodland, pasture, multiple sport pitches and a nature reserve, the campus also has two
Grade I listedarts and crafts buildings designed by
Ernest Gimson, the Lupton Hall (1911), which was co-designed, built and largely financed by ex-pupil
Geoffrey Lupton, and the Memorial Library (1921).[2]
There are three contemporary, award-winning buildings:
The school was started in 1893 by Amy Garrett Badley and John Haden Badley. John had met Oswald B Powell when they were introduced to each other by
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, whom they both knew from their Cambridge days. John said that Oswald and his wife, Winifred Powell, were as important as Amy and him.[1] A house called Bedales was rented just outside
Lindfield, near
Haywards Heath.[1] In 1899 Badley and Powell (the latter borrowing heavily from his father, the Vicar of
Bisham) purchased a
country estate near Steep and constructed a purpose-built school, including state-of-the-art electric lighting, which opened in 1900. The site has been extensively developed over the past century, including the relocation of a number of historic
vernaculartimber frame barns. A
preparatory school, Dunhurst, was started in 1902 on
Montessori principles (and was visited in 1919 by
Maria Montessori herself), and a primary school, Dunannie, was added in the 1950s.
The Badleys took a non-denominational approach to religion and the school has never had a chapel: its relatively secular teaching made it attractive in its early days to
nonconformists, agnostics,
Quakers,
Unitarians and
liberal Jews, who formed a significant element of its early intake. The school was also well known and popular in some
Cambridge and
Fabian intellectual circles, with connections to the
Wedgwoods, Darwins,
Huxleys, and
Trevelyans. Books such as A quoi tient la supériorité des Anglo-Saxons? and L'Education nouvelle popularised the school on
the Continent, leading to a cosmopolitan intake of Russian and other European children in the 1920s.
Bedales was originally a small and intimate school: the 1900 buildings were designed for 150 pupils. Under a programme of expansion and modernisation in the 1960s and 1970s under the headmastership of Tim Slack, the senior school grew from 240 pupils in 1966 to 340, thereafter increasing to some 465.
Since 1900 the school has been located on a 120-acre (0.49 km2) estate in the village of Steep, near Petersfield, Hampshire. As well as playing fields, orchards, woodland, pasture, multiple sport pitches and a nature reserve, the campus also has two
Grade I listedarts and crafts buildings designed by
Ernest Gimson, the Lupton Hall (1911), which was co-designed, built and largely financed by ex-pupil
Geoffrey Lupton, and the Memorial Library (1921).[2]
There are three contemporary, award-winning buildings: