“At the top of the hill above the Abbey the grounds merged into the woods of Daws Hill, still in Lord Carrington’s hands, while beyond the lawns facing the Abbey a beautiful avenue of lime trees melted into the distance. There was a feeling of spaciousness and repose about the whole place.”
Stands There a School Elsie Bowerman
Wycombe Abbey has over 125 years of experience of educating girls since the establishment of the School by our pioneering founder, Dame Frances Dove, in 1896. On our 125th anniversary, we took the opportunity to consider Wycombe Abbey’s future and Our Strategic Direction 2020-2025 sets out an ambitious roadmap. It focuses on six key areas: academic excellence, pastoral care and wellbeing, leadership and growth, engagement and connectivity, global awareness and future-focus and transformational change.
We know that we have a responsibility to preserve the School’s legacy and to build for the future; we are committed to developing a world class campus from our existing facilities across our impressive estate. Our aim is to deliver a phased programme which will be designed to ensure that the built environment genuinely supports our vision for 21st century teaching and learning and outstanding pastoral care through the full-boarding model. The creation of an Estates Masterplan will allow us to do this in a planned and thoughtful way.
Work to enhance the site has already begun with the refurbishment of Big School and design work has started on two key projects in the first phase of the Masterplan, with the hope that these will start construction as soon as we have the necessary planning permissions. This will see the building of a new Junior Boarding House and a new academic building – The Innovation and Design Centre –which will offer a modern space for the integrated teaching of art, technology, engineering and robotics.
I hope you are excited about these developments and I look forward to sharing more detail with you over the coming months.
Jo Duncan, Headmistress
Wycombe Abbey was founded by Miss (later Dame) Frances Dove on Victoria’s Day, 26 September 1896. Miss Dove was a remarkable woman by any measure. Whilst Headmistress at St Leonard’s School in Fife, Scotland she announced what she described as “the new experiment” which was the foundation of a sister school in the south of England for 40 girls – and so Wycombe Abbey was born. In 1896, the Abbey and 30 acres of land were purchased from the third Lord Carrington whose grandfather had purchased the estate nearly 100 years previously. As Senior, Elsie Bowerman wrote in Stands There a School (1966), “Wycombe Abbey certainly fulfilled most of the essential requirements Miss Dove had set before her when she began her search. It was about 36 miles from London in delightful surroundings in the Chiltern Hills, on the outskirts of what was then the charming old country town of High Wycombe.”
Intensive building activity followed in order to convert a rather grand residence into a functioning school. This was followed by additional classrooms, the Outhouses (1898) and the Chapel (1926). Daws Hill was purchased by the School in 1926 and the whole site has seen considerable change, including during the war years when the School was requisitioned by the US 8th Air Force. Further development followed when the Lancaster Arts Centre (1987), the Goodland Music School (1998) and the Davies Sports Centre (2003) were built and, most recently, two new boarding houses (Pitt and Rubens) were constructed on the site of the old swimming pool and opened in 2017. Today, the grounds extend to just over 170 acres with beautiful, landscaped gardens and extensive woodland. As we look to the future, we are mindful of our responsibility to caretake Wycombe Abbey’s estate for the future.
In order to realise the vision that Wycombe Abbey remains at the forefront of girls’ boarding education and is recognised globally as a world class school, it is imperative to develop a coherent, long-term strategy to transform the estate. To help achieve this, the School ran a design competition with five leading architectural practices in early 2021 and subsequently appointed Walters & Cohen Architects to undertake the production of a site-wide Masterplan, supported by a range of additional consultants.
Throughout 2021, the team worked with the School to explore how the site could be developed over the coming years through enhancing existing facilities and building new ones so that the built environment supports the world class teaching and pastoral care that already exists at Wycombe Abbey. Over the next 15 years, it is anticipated pupil numbers will grow slightly from the current 660 to a maximum of 720. In part, this will help to facilitate the School’s aspiration to significantly increase the number of pupils it supports through its bursary programme from the current 30 pupils to a target of 90 pupils.
The School’s site forms the major part of a nationally significant landscape (Grade II) as recorded in English Heritage’s Register of Parks and Gardens of Historic Importance in England. The Abbey itself is a Grade II* listed building and there are three other Grade II listed buildings (Abbey Lodge, Rupert Lodge, Daws Hill House) on the site. The Masterplan has therefore been informed by the Historical Landscape Assessment (2002) and the Landscape Conservation Management Plan (2011) and our plans are very much to work within and, where possible, to enhance the grandeur of the estate.
The outcome of the strategy work is an exciting and ambitious Masterplan that extends to 2035-2040. There is much to do, and the Masterplan has been broken down into five phases, each with a number of large capital projects. Overall, the School’s boarding provision will be transformed, with a mixture of new boarding houses and the complete refurbishment of most of the existing houses. Academic, pastoral and sporting provision will be similarly enhanced, both within existing spaces and through the construction of new facilities.
To facilitate an outstanding education and to enable each of our pupils to flourish and fulfil their potential, the School needs to continue to develop its amazing site and to invest in having world class facilities. This will provide the environment needed for our girls to pursue academic excellence and their personal development.
The aim of the Estates Masterplan is to set out a long-term strategic programme that will see us build state-of-the-art teaching, learning and living spaces in line with the best schools in the world.
In the process, all new facilities and renovations will be constructed to the highest performance standards, with a clear focus on pupil outcomes and environmental considerations including sustainability, accessibility and ecology.
Developing an estate such as ours will take time and considerable resources and, as much as we would like to be able to do it all at once, this will not be possible. Funding
will need to be secured, planning permissions obtained and it will be important to manage the programme so that it does not unduly disrupt the pupils’ time at the School. The indicative 15 to 20-year life of the Masterplan represents the fastest we currently envisage moving through the five phases, although it may be possible to accelerate this if funding is secured sooner.
Today, Wycombe Abbey is recognised as the leading girls’ boarding school in the UK; we will constantly strive to maintain that position and to deliver on our vision to be recognised as a world class school. High quality, fit-for-purpose facilities that benefit our current and future pupils will not, on their own, achieve this, but providing the best possible environment for our pupils to learn and thrive is an essential ingredient in helping to do so.
Mark Mackenzie Crooks Bursar
Big School is an iconic space at Wycombe Abbey loved by generations of pupils. It was created by the third Lord Carrington as a playroom for his four daughters. The Foundation Stone, laid by the youngest – Judith Sydney Myee Carrington, aged 21 months – on her arrival in High Wycombe from Australia on 1 July 1891, is still visible on the exterior of the building. A generous donation of £1 million from the Thompson Family Charitable Trust was made to Wycombe Abbey in July 2018 and this has enabled the refurbishment of this much-loved school meeting place. Big School’s refurbishment has been carefully undertaken both to celebrate the past and to embrace the future, it combines sensitive restoration and intelligent redesign. Since its reopening in the Autumn Term 2022, it has resumed its place at the heart of the School for generations to come.
“The hatchments in its ceilings have looked down on School assemblies, choral practices, examinations, balls and indeed functions of every kind since the days, in 1896, when it was the only room in the School with both lighting and a modicum of heating.”
Wycombe Abbey Revisited – An Illustrated History
Margaret Beckett
Junior House is the foundation of a pupil’s experience at Wycombe Abbey. All new UIIIs (Year 7) live together during their first year at School before moving on to one of nine mixed-age Senior Houses. It is during this first transformative year that they form friendships, many of which will last them throughout their life.
Junior House is a happy and supportive environment which provides tailored pastoral care for every girl. The current building was originally built as a sanitorium in the Second World War with wide corridors and sweeping views of the valley. It works well in many ways, with the space lending itself to group activities which offer opportunities for the girls to bond, and large dormitories offering the chance to learn from communal living and develop self-awareness. However, the building is outdated, and we are now seeking purpose-built facilities. Our vision is to create a new state-of-the-art Junior House located to the east of Daws Hill. Set amongst the trees, the new boarding house will divide into two wings, each with enhanced pastoral staff provision, to ensure that every pupil is known as an individual. The House will provide a welcoming and nurturing home for our youngest girls. Designed from the outset with the pupils in mind; the new facilities will include a variety of internal and external spaces for socialising, relaxing and study.
Our curriculum supports pupils to become broad creative thinkers and problemsolvers who can make a difference today and in the world of the future. The proposed Innovation and Design Centre (IDC) will provide a modern, state-of-theart facility which will encourage an integrated approach to teaching and learning. The Art and Design and Technology departments will be housed within the new facility which, along with the existing Performing Arts Centre, will create an ‘Arts Quarter’ on the lake.
The IDC will allow for significantly increased capacity over the current facilities in the Carrington Building and act as a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship, driving flexible thinking. ‘Making Spaces’ will augment the rigorous specialist teaching we already offer through interdisciplinary learning, visiting speakers and workshop leaders from the world of industry.
There are many other improvements and developments required if we are to realise our vision for a world class campus. It will take many years and considerable investment to achieve and our ambitious plan contains at least four further phases beyond Phase 1.
Phase 2
• Construction of a new Main School Dining Room.
• Construction of a Sports Pavilion.
• Upgrade and extension to Science Facilities.
Phase 3
• Construction of a new General Teaching Block.
• Construction of a new Clarence Boarding House.
Phase 4
• Construction of at least two new Senior Boarding Houses.
In addition to the specific phased developments, a number of generic enhancements to the estate will be interspersed throughout the duration of the Masterplan. In particular, and sitting alongside the main Masterplan, there will be specific plans to improve sustainability and accessibility. A number of more minor, but still important, projects will also be delivered alongside the major phases.
Phase 5
• Complete refurbishment of the four Outhouses.
• Complete refurbishment of Daws Hill.
Philanthropy has played an important role in the development of the School throughout its history and the generosity of our community of supporters will help us to secure our long-term vision which is predicated upon the need to maintain and enhance the substantial infrastructure the School has developed. Our strategic priorities include pursuing the transformational site development plan across our magnificent conservation-listed grounds. Our investment in new, world class facilities will benefit our pupils, parents, staff and wider community.
Over recent years, several areas of School have been improved and refurbished. This includes two projects that received significant philanthropic support: both Big School and the Pitt and Rubens Boarding Houses were made possible thanks to the generosity of our donors. We continue to be very grateful for their wonderful support.
Our ambitious plans for Wycombe Abbey’s campus can only be achieved with the financial support of our community of Seniors, parents and friends, and we will be communicating more about our capital fundraising plans in due course. In the meantime, if you would like to become part of our giving community, please contact me at development@wycombeabbey.com.
Robin Sharp Director of Development