Thorpe Hall School is celebrating its Centenary Year this academic year. It’s a truly impressive milestone that most definitely deserves to be celebrated, and a whole host of events has been planned to mark the occasion.
Founded at the request of Thorpe Bay residents in 1925, the school first opened its doors with a cohort of just six boys under the headship of the Rev. E de Russet, a respected Free Church Minister and educationalist, in a house in Thorpe Hall Avenue. By 1940 there were over one hundred Thorpe Hall School pupils and a new headmaster, Mr. A.C. Lewis, who had taken the radical step of admitting young ladies.
Another 49 years later in 1989, the school moved to its current 11-acre site, allowing for an expansion of new facilities including a fully-equipped 250-seat theatre, state-of-the-art ICT suites, dedicated studios for Food, Textiles, Music, Art and D&T, woodland classroom for outdoor learning, 5-acre sports and recreation field, all-weather cricket strip, tennis courts and a new Early Years dance and yoga studio. Under the headship of Mr Hampton, the school undertook the ambitious project of building a £2.4m sports centre – the Seaglass – which was opened by British Gymnastics gold medallist Max Whitlock in 2018.
Today, Thorpe Hall is a thriving co-educational, independent school, with more students on roll than ever before. The facilities and curriculum continues to expand, with the building of new science labs, textiles room and a media suite, plus the addition of a Creative Arts faculty for 2024/25. How exciting to see where the next 100 years will take us!
