Our New Home

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We have acquired one of Bath’s historic buildings to provide a wonderful new home for our Junior School and Nursery School.Cranwell House, situated in eleven acres of parkland and gardens was built in the 1850s. Originally built as a gracious country seat for one of Bath’s most famous mayors, Jerome Murch, it has subsequently been an art school and, more recently the home of Summerfield Special School. The building plan was copied from Inigo Jones’s design for Widcombe House in Bath and has a wealth of original architectural features. The architect Richard Wilson, also designed the main building of our current Senior School.

Cranwell House was placed on the market by Bath & North East Somerset Council upon the opening of the Three Ways School in September 2007. The Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST) design team, led by Chris Jolly is now working with the Royal High School’s senior management team, together with a range of experts and consultants to address all the issues related to the refurbishment and development of the Cranwell House site.

We are extremely fortunate to have the resources and expertise of the GDST, which manages 29 schools in England & Wales behind us.  The GDST has overseen many large scale investment programmes in its schools.  The planned development of Cranwell House involves the complete refurbishment of the main building and the construction of a purpose built new Nursery School. In addition, the existing gymnasium and temporary buildings are to be demolished and replaced with a new sports hall, dining facilities and space for performing arts.

With extensive and secure grounds, our new home will allow for exciting developments, both in learning and in play, for the Royal High School’s youngest students.  Royal High School Principal James Graham-Brown said  “Cranwell House is a wonderful, nurturing environment for children to learn in. The light and spacious classrooms look out on to beautiful grounds and we are extremely fortunate to secure this splendid piece of Bath’s heritage for the school.  Whilst it is a similar distance from the city centre to our current junior school, it offers our families more convenient access, whether arriving on foot, by bicycle, car or bus.” The grounds and buildings will also be developed for occasional use by students from the  Senior School and Sixth Form College.  Plans are already in hand to create a school allotment, and the site offers outstanding possibilities for hosting whole school events, both indoors and outside.We anticipate that Cranwell House will be ready to welcome us by Easter 2010.  Please visit this page from time to time to keep up with news about our new home.  You can see some photos on this page and we will update these as the development progresses.

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