Taunton School
Encyclopedia
Taunton School is a co-educational independent school
Independent school
An independent school is a school that is independent in its finances and governance; it is not dependent upon national or local government for financing its operations, nor reliant on taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of tuition charges, gifts, and in some cases the...

 in the county town
County town
A county town is a county's administrative centre in the United Kingdom or Ireland. County towns are usually the location of administrative or judicial functions, or established over time as the de facto main town of a county. The concept of a county town eventually became detached from its...

 of Taunton
Taunton
Taunton is the county town of Somerset, England. The town, including its suburbs, had an estimated population of 61,400 in 2001. It is the largest town in the shire county of Somerset....

 in Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

 in South West England. It serves boarding and day-school pupils from the ages of 13 to 18.

The current headmaster is Dr John Hunt Newton, appointed in the autumn of 2005 replacing Julian Whiteley.

The school campus also includes Taunton School International for overseas students; Taunton Preparatory School, serving boarding and day-school pupils aged 7 to 13; Taunton Pre-Prep School, serving day-school pupils aged 4 to 7, and Taunton Nursery, serving pupils aged 2 to 4.

Beginnings

Taunton School was founded in 1847 as a boys-only school for dissenters
English Dissenters
English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....

 - those not members of the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

. Right from its founding, it was in direct competition with the other independent schools in Taunton: King's College
King's College (Taunton)
King's College is a coeducational, secondary boarding school in Taunton, Somerset, England. It is an independent school of 430 pupils aged 13 to 18, including about 300 boarders. The head of the school is currently Richard Biggs, who started his first academic year in the winter of...

 (Church of England) and Queen's College
Queen's College, Taunton
Queen's College is a co-educational independent school located in Taunton, the county town of Somerset, England. It is a day/boarding school for children aged 2–18. The school incorporates Nursery, Pre-Prep, Junior and Senior schools. The current headmaster of the Senior School is Chris Alcock...

 (Methodist). Its first site was at the southern end of the town.

In the 1870s, the school's governors purchased a site at the northern end of Taunton, on Staplegrove Road. They had built, by Joseph James, a gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....

-influenced building, in the prevailing style of the period. The school is constructed in a C-plan, with a 50 feet (15.2 m) high tower. Grey stone came from Somerset's Mendip Hills
Mendip Hills
The Mendip Hills is a range of limestone hills to the south of Bristol and Bath in Somerset, England. Running east to west between Weston-super-Mare and Frome, the hills overlook the Somerset Levels to the south and the Avon Valley to the north...

. This large building still dominates the school's 90 acres (36.4 ha) campus today. It is a Grade II listed building.

The school was a founding member of the World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships
World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships
The World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships is an annual international English language debating and public speaking tournament for individual high school-level students representing different countries. It occurs during a five-day period in late March and involves 180 to 200...

 and has hosted the tournament numerous times.

Developments

A chapel was built in 1907 in contrasting style to the rest of the school. Its sponsor was the wealthy Sir Henry Wills, later Lord Winterstoke. Wills was a director of Bristol-based family firm, Wills Tobacco. This company later joined with several others to become Imperial Tobacco
Imperial Tobacco
Imperial Tobacco is a global tobacco company headquartered in Bristol, United Kingdom. It is the world’s fourth-largest cigarette company measured by market share , and the world's largest producer of cigars, fine-cut tobacco and tobacco papers...

. Two features in the chapel are especially of note: the organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...

 and the mosaics. In 2007 on the centenary of the founding of the Chapel the original pipe organ was removed, it being replaced by a new digital organ which was funded in part, by donations from Old Tauntonians (Alumni).

Merger

In 1976 Taunton School merged with the senior section of Weirfield School, an independent boarding- and day-school for girls, which was also situated on Staplegrove Road. This became one of the earliest fully co-educational independent schools in England. Additional buildings were erected on the original Taunton School campus, and Weirfield continued as a girls-only junior school.

In 1990, in order to create closer links between the two junior schools and Taunton School, Taunton Junior School (originally known as Thone) and Weirfield were renamed Taunton Junior Boys School and Taunton Junior Girls School, respectively. As both Junior Schools needed modernisation, building began in 1993 on the boys' site (Thone) to create a new joint boys and girls school, which was partly financed by the sale of the Weirfield site. In 1994 both schools were located at the Thone site and they were renamed Taunton Preparatory School. A classroom block in the Preparatory School is called Weirfield, as is the main Senior Girls' Boarding house.

Notable alumni

Taunton School Alumni are known as Old Tauntonians.
  • John Cameron
    John Cameron (cricketer)
    John Hemsley Cameron was a cricketer who played in two Tests for the West Indian cricket team in 1939...

    , cricketer
  • Mark Getty
    Mark Getty
    Mark Getty , is a British businessman. A member of a family which originally made its money from oil, he is the son of American-British billionaire philanthropist Sir Paul Getty.-Career:...

    , founder of Getty Images
    Getty Images
    Getty Images, Inc. is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 80 million still images and illustrations and more than 50,000 hours of stock film footage...

  • Alan Gibson
    Alan Gibson
    Norman Alan Stanley Gibson was an English journalist, writer and radio broadcaster, best known for his work in connection with cricket, though he also sometimes covered football and rugby union...

    , cricket writer and broadcaster
  • Charles George Gordon
    Charles George Gordon
    Major-General Charles George Gordon, CB , known as "Chinese" Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum, was a British army officer and administrator....

    , also known as "General Gordon of Khartoum"
  • Aftab Habib
    Aftab Habib
    Aftab Habib is an English cricketer. He has been appointed the coach of Afghanistan national cricket team on September 2011...

    , cricketer
  • John Jameson
    John Jameson (cricketer)
    John Alexander Jameson MBE is a former English cricketer who played in four Tests and three ODIs for England from 1971 to 1975. Jameson represented Warwickshire from 1960 until 1976....

    , cricketer
  • Peter Redgrove
    Peter Redgrove
    Peter William Redgrove was a prolific and widely respected British poet, who also wrote works with his second wife Penelope Shuttle on menstruation and women's health, novels and plays.-Life:...

    , poet
  • J. M. Roberts, author and historian
  • Ian McNeice
    Ian McNeice
    Ian McNeice is a prolific English screen, stage, and television character actor.-Early life:McNeice was born in Basingstoke in Hampshire. McNeice's acting training started at the Taunton School in Somerset, followed by two years at the Salisbury Playhouse...

    , actor
  • Peter Westmacott
    Peter Westmacott
    Sir Peter John Westmacott, KCMG, LVO is a senior British diplomat, currently serving as HM Ambassador to the French Republic....

    , diplomat
  • Jack White
    Jack White (cricketer)
    John Cornish White, known as "Farmer" or "Jack", was an English cricketer who played for Somerset and England. White was named Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1929...

    , cricketer
  • Tim Willcox
    Tim Willcox
    Tim Willcox is a British journalist for BBC News, where he presents news bulletins for both the BBC News Channel and BBC World News. Generally a relief presenter for the BBC, he is probably most recognisable for presenting the BBC's live coverage from Chile during events surrounding the Copiapó...

    , BBC
    BBC
    The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

     news presenter

Special notes

John Rae
John Rae (educator)
Dr John Rae was a British educator, author and novelist. He was headmaster of Taunton School and then Head Master of Westminster School ....

 (Headmaster, 1966-1970) was a prominent educator and novelist who went on to become headmaster of Westminster School
Westminster School
The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...

.

Academic Results

A Level
Overall Pass Rate:
2009 - 98%

International Baccalaureate
The first cohort of students sat the IB Diploma in 2009. All 15 students passed with an average Diploma score of 34 points (4 points above the World average). 5 students achieved at least 37 out of 45 points including one student who achieved 43 out of 45 points. This result ranked the school as the highest IB newcomer in the UK by the Financial Times. In 2010, one student achieved the highest possible mark of 45 points.

GCSE
Percentage of pupils who gained at 5 grades A* - C
2009 - 98%

Oxford and Cambridge Places
In the past 7 years, at least 42 Taunton School pupils have been accepted for Oxford or Cambridge. Approximately 96% of all Sixth Form leavers take up University or College places.

External links

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