Saving the Estate
Claremont Fan Court School exists because of a rescue. By 1930, the Claremont estate in Esher – a property that had been home to Lord Clive of India, Princess Charlotte, and the exiled French king Louis-Philippe – was empty and marked for demolition. The governors of a south London girls' school seized the opportunity. They bought the mansion and 100 acres of grounds, moved their pupils from West Norwood to Esher, and renamed the school Claremont. The building that Vanbrugh had designed, that Capability Brown had landscaped, and that royalty had called home was saved by a school that needed a bigger site.
The Claremont girls' school had been founded in 1922 by Miss C. May Trotman with just eight pupils at a house in West Norwood. By 1930 it had outgrown its premises. The move to Claremont gave it a setting that few schools in England can match. In 1978, Claremont merged with Fan Court School, a boys' preparatory school founded in 1932, to create the co-educational Claremont Fan Court School.
The Estate
The school grounds adjoin the National Trust's Claremont Landscape Garden, one of the earliest and most important landscape gardens in England. The estate's history stretches back to 1709, when Sir John Vanbrugh built the first house here. Successive owners – including the Duke of Newcastle, Clive of India, and Queen Victoria – shaped both the house and the gardens. Pupils at Claremont Fan Court walk through a landscape that has been designed by Vanbrugh, Charles Bridgeman, William Kent, and Capability Brown. No other school campus in England has quite that pedigree.
The School Today
Claremont Fan Court takes pupils from nursery through to sixth form, making it one of the few schools in Surrey offering an all-through education on a single site. Around 1,190 pupils attend. The school's approach is broad rather than narrowly academic – the emphasis is on developing the whole child across academic, creative, sporting, and personal dimensions. The setting, fifteen miles from central London with good road and rail links, makes it a practical choice for families across north Surrey. Joyce Grenfell, the actress and comedienne, was a pupil at the school in its earlier incarnation.
