| Motto | Nisi dominus frustra |
|---|---|
| Established | 1923 |
| Type | Independent School |
| Head Master | John Lever, MA (Cantab) |
| Location | Wimborne Dorset England, UK |
| Staff | ~100 |
| Students | ~600 |
| Gender | Co-ed |
| Ages | –18 |
| Houses | 10 |
| Colours | Blue & White |
| Publication | The Canfordian, Canford News, This Week (weekly pupil-produced newspaper) |
Canford School is a coeducational independent school for both day and boarding pupils, in the village of Canford Magna, near to the market town of Wimborne Minster in Dorset, in South West England. The school was founded in 1923. There are approximately 600 pupils at Canford, organised into houses and ranging in age from thirteen to eighteen. John Lever is currently the Headmaster; Richard Knott is currently the Second Master. The school performs well academically and in the last four years has exceeded both the LA and national average for GCSE performance.[1] The Good Schools Guide called the school "Hard to fault, kind, confident, enthusiastic, unpretentious and good all round."[2]
In 2005 the school was one of fifty of the country's leading private schools which were found guilty of running an illegal price-fixing cartel, exposed by The Times, which had allowed them to drive up fees for thousands of parents.[3] Each school was required to pay a nominal penalty of £10,000 and all agreed to make ex-gratia payments totalling three million pounds into a trust designed to benefit pupils who attended the schools during the period in respect of which fee information was shared.[4]
Community Service plays an important role at Canford - every week over 100 6th formers help in local primary schools, special schools, hospitals and hospices, respite care centres and charity shops. Others visit the elderly, produce drama and organise activity projects for less fortunate children in the local area.
The school has achieved high sporting success over the years winning the national Rosslyn Park rugby sevens in 1997 (the team in which Old Canfordians and now rugby professionals Ben Gollings and Nick Makin played) and several national hockey titles. In 2008, four pupils won national honours, representing the England Under 16 Hockey team, England Under 16 Rugby team, England Cricket Elite Player Development and Great Britain rowing. In 2007 the U15 cricket team reached the semi-final of the national Taverners Cup beating the favourites Millfield in the process. Even more recently the U16 hockey team reached the finals of the national indoors and the semi-finals of the nationals.
In March 2006 the school suffered an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease though only two students were affected.[5]
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Canford has seven boarding houses and three day houses. Each house has a married housemaster/mistress, three tutors (one resident in each boarding house) and at least one house matron. House year groups vary between ten and fifteen pupils and each community numbers sixty to sixty-five.
Boys' boarding houses:
Girls' boarding houses:
Day houses:
The school has its own 9-hole golf course run by Canford Golf Club which is a proprietary club owned by Canford School. The course sits within the school's 300 acres (1.2 km2) of mature parkland with many ancient trees and a stream providing the setting for some challenging holes of golf. There are grass tennis courts around the school grounds and during the summer months one of the two astro-turf hockey pitches is converted into tennis courts. Canford also has one of the few real tennis courts remaining in the United Kingdom, in a complex which also includes four squash courts. A large sports complex includes a fitness gym, resident physiotherapist, large sports hall with facilities for basketball, indoor football, netball and trampolining and facilities for the teaching of A-Level Physical Education.
Assyrian Frieze
In 1992 a lost Assyrian stone relief was rediscovered on the wall of "the Grubber" (the school tuck shop).[6] The relief was sold by Christie's at auction in 1994 for £ 7.7 million (US$ 11.9 million), by far the highest price ever paid for an antiquity. Although it is at first sight rather unlikely that such a valuable item should be found on the wall of a school tuck shop, the history of the school explains how the relief came to be there. It had been brought back from the site of Nimrud in northern Mesopotamia (Iraq) by Sir Austen Henry Layard along with other antiquities which were displayed at Canford before it was a school. Originally Canford had been a private country house (known as Canford Manor), designed by Sir Charles Barry, and the residence of Layard's cousin and mother-in-law, Lady Charlotte Guest and her husband, Sir John Josiah Guest. At that time the building now known as the Grubber had been used to display antiquities and was known as "the Nineveh Porch". It was however believed by the school authorities to be a plaster copy of an original which had been lost overboard during river transit and little attention was paid to it after the school was established. A dartboard was even hung in the Grubber close to where the frieze was displayed. It was John Russell of Columbia University who identified the frieze as an original, one of a set of three relief slabs taken from the throne room of Assyrian King Assurnasirpal II (883–859 BC). A new plaster copy now stands in the foyer of the Layard Theatre at Canford and a number of "Assyrian Scholarships" are available, funded from the sale proceeds which also helped pay for the construction of a new sports facility. The original relief is now part of the collection of the Miho Museum in Japan.[7] John Malcolm Russell, From Nineveh to New York. The strange story of the Assyrian reliefs in the Metropolitan Museum and the hidden masterpiece at Canford School. New Haven/London: Yale University Press; New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1997. Judith McKenzie, "Canford School", ch. 10 of Russell 1997 (above), pp. 173-189. Samuel M. Paley, "A winged genius and royal attendant from the Northwest Palace at Nimrud". Bulletin of the Miho Museum 2 (1999), pp. 17-29, Pl. 1.
The Layard Theatre is situated inside Canford School and is open to the public. It seats 299 people and can also cater for those who are restricted to a wheelchair. It was opened by Sir Richard Eyre in May 1999, and was part-funded from the £7.7 million achieved through the sale of an Assyrian relief (see below), originally brought to Canford when it was a private house by Sir Austen Henry Layard in the mid-nineteenth century.
In addition to housing Canford's drama department and student productions, the Layard theatre provides a venue for a wide range of professional entertainment, including top quality theatre and music. These productions are open to the public and are publicised in the theatre's seasonal programme. Parking for the theatre is free.
Since opening, the theatre programme has featured, amongst others, classical and modern drama (Actors of Dionysus, Compass Theatre, English Shakespeare Company, KAOS, Kneehigh, Red Shift, the Royal National Theatre and Not the National Theatre); children's theatre (Nuffield Theatre, Roundabout); music (classical, jazz, blues, folk, rock and even Taiko drummers); comedy (Infinite Number of Monkeys, Chris Addison and Dan Antopolski); classical ballet (Swansea's Ballet Russe) and modern dance, opera and many well-known speakers.