Hampshire Country School is a private boarding school for gifted children in Rindge, New Hampshire, started by Henry Curtis Patey and Adelaide Walker Patey in 1948. Formerly a co-educational school, it is designed now as a residential middle school for boys with high ability who have difficulty in other settings. Populations served include students with Asperger syndrome, nonverbal learning disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Hampshire Country School is a place for boys with high intellectual ability that has not been realized and with idiosyncrasies that may have become major problems in traditional settings. The school provides an unusual environment in which those problems are no longer as significant—not because they have been “fixed,” but because the school's focus is on the bright, active, engaged, and engaging side of each child rather than on his quirks or limitations.
For over 60 years, Hampshire Country School has been educating children of high intellectual ability who need a friendly environment and an unusual amount of adult attention. It is a family-style boarding school for 25 boys, mostly of middle school age, from all parts of the country. Classes are traditional but small (3 to 6 students). The 1,700-acre (6.9 km2) campus includes modest buildings, three lakes, and a small mountain. Daily life is very structured, with after-school and weekend activities plus time for organized outdoor and indoor play. It is here that many students find their first real friends and playmates.
The school has entered into an agreement with the Northeast Wilderness Trust[1] to protect the grounds in perpetuity. These grounds were originally a farm.[2] The Wapack Trail runs through the Stony Top mountain ridge on one portion of the grounds.[3]
Mr. Patey advocated the concept of Milieu therapy, and in the 1970s the school published an in-house journal called the Journal of Residential Therapy.
In the 1970s the school had a co-ed student population of up to 125 students. Students lived at the school year-round and stayed in tents in a summer camp called Camp Timbertop for most of the summer. Many of these students were supported by Massachusetts special education grants. Massachusetts funding for special education under Chapter 750 became more restricted in 1972 under Chapter 766,[4] and as a result the student population declined, and the summer camp was eventually discontinued.
Temple Grandin is a famous alumna who graduated in 1966.