Knighton House, in Durweston, Dorset is a prep school for girls ages 7-13 years with a pre-prep department for girls and boys aged between 3 – 7 years.
Knighton is a relatively small school — with numbers moving between 100 and 130. This has always been part of its strength and its appeal. The individual attention that every child receives here creates a superb start to school life, nurturing confidence and unleashing the imagination — the two things that young people will need most in a rapidly changing world.
Between 1950 and 2015 the school leased its premises from the Crown Estate. At the start of 2016 Knighton bought its site outright. After decades of haphazard and intermittent investment in its premises, Knighton is now committed to creating a new development plan to deliver over the next five years a state of the art prep school, designed for the needs of the 21st century children.
Knighton is blessed with a beautiful site of some 35 acres on rising chalk download, overlooking the River Stour in Dorset’s Area of Natural Beauty this too is part of what makes the school special. It’s an outdoor school encouraging a familiarity with and understanding of nature that stays with pupils all their lives.
The school seeks to modernise and rationalise the academic, pastoral and extra-curricular facilities. The plan will refurbish where appropriate, demolish where desirable and build where necessary. It will also consider landscaping and flows of people, horses (riding is a big part of the school) and traffic.
The plan will consider all the needs of the school and be phased over one, three and five years. The project will be part funded from Knighton’s reserves but there will also be a fund raising effort among alumni and former parents.
Knighton House is a wonderful school in an idyllic place: we now need the fabric of the school to live up to its surroundings. We want to create a holistic scheme for well designed, modernised campus that reflects the ethos of the school and so contributes to the children’s inspiring experience here.
