A Brief History of the College and its Site

In 1843, a group of Church of England clergymen, with the backing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, were looking to found a boarding school with the prime purpose of educating the sons of clergy.  Hearing that the Castle Inn at Marlborough was vacant, they took a lease on it and so Marlborough College started in August 1843 with the admission of its first 199 boys.
 

Early History of the College Site
The First Fifty Years of College Life
Recent History of the College

Early History of the College Site

It is probable that the Mound is roughly contemporary with the still larger Silbury Hill, some five miles to the west of Marlborough and around 4,500 years old. Then, from 1068 the Normans started to build a castle here, digging a moat to surround the Marlborough Mound and a large area to the south of it. The castle reached the peak of its importance in Henry III's time, Parliament enacting “The Statutes of Marlborough” there in 1267.

Although the castle (having no further military significance) was allowed to decay, its estate stayed in Royal hands until the time of Henry VIII.  When the latter married Jane Seymour the estate was given to Jane's brother, Edward, who became the 1st Duke of Somerset.

Successive members of the Seymour family lived in a house which the family built close to the site of the old castle.  At the end of the 17th Century the 6th Duke of Somerset, having acquired Petworth House in Sussex through marriage, moved there with his wife and, in due course, demolished the old Seymour house at Marlborough in which he had grown up.

By 1711 the Duke had built another house on the old Marlborough site which he gave to  his son, Algernon, Lord Hertford, and the latter moved into it in 1718, shortly after his marriage to Frances Thynne of Longleat.

The Hertfords lived happily at Marlborough, raising two children and with Lady Hertford creating a fine garden to the south of a Grotto which she had constructed at the foot of the Mound. 

With the death of Lord Hertford (later, the 7th Duke of Somerset) in 1750, the old house at Marlborough was leased out as a very fashionable coaching inn which served the gentry flocking from London to Bath at the peak of its fame.  Over the next ninety years, famous visitors at the Castle Inn included Prime Minister William Pitt (Lord Chatham) and the Duke of Wellington.

The building of the railways in the early 1840s led to the rapid demise of the coaching business and the Castle Inn closed in January 1843, prior to the foundation of Marlborough College. 

top

The First Fifty Years of College Life

The intention was that the school should have a maximum of 500 boys and that roughly one third of these should be the sons of laity, who would be charged more (initially 50 guineas a year) to subsidise the clergy children (30 guineas a year).

The College reached its target of 500 boys by 1848, but conditions were extremely Spartan and, apart from their studies, the boys were relatively neglected.  Resentment built up, culminating in November 1851 with the Marlborough “Rebellion”, as a result of which pupil numbers declined and the first Master of the College, Matthew Wilkinson, resigned.

With the College now heavily in debt, its future was in jeopardy.  Fortunately, the next two Masters (George Cotton 1852-58 and George Bradley 1858-70) proved to be inspiring Heads.  Both came to us from Rugby School and brought with them all the reforms which had been pioneered there by Dr Arnold.

By 1870, the College's reputation both for scholarship and as a forward-looking, Christian boarding school was established.  Over the best part of the next hundred years the College was seen as a school which provided a reliable stream of able young men to the professions, the armed forces, the Church and all walks of public life, both in the U.K. and abroad.

top

Recent History of the College

Marlborough has never been frightened of change.  Numerous academic initiatives have been fostered at the College (for example, Business Studies, SMP Maths, Combined Science and the teaching of Arabic and Chinese) and in 1968 Marlborough was one of the first of the traditional boys' boarding schools to admit girls into the Sixth Form.

In 1989, the College went fully co-educational with the admission of girls into the Lower School and with the establishment of the first of the all-girl boarding houses.

Today the College caters for about 870 pupils (of which just over a third are girls) and the great majority of which (98%) are boarders.  These are accommodated in 14 boarding houses of which 4 are all-girls, 5 are all-boys and the remaining 5 houses have 13-18 year old boys with a number of Sixth Form girls as well.