Girls

[huntzoey]

What is the oldest girls prep boarding school in the UK?

I know that the boys schools go back to the middle ages.

“prep” for what? Girls schools for centuries prep for marriage or nun.

Interesting question. I went to one that was pretty old but had been founded as a charitable home for orphaned girls whose fathers had been in certain trades. There are probably many like that or those that had their roots in the church.

I’ve taken it that the OP means a school that starts at 7 and runs to 11 or 13.

Godstowe School at High Wycombe. Look up their history. They are the oldest boarding prep for girls and established close links with Wycombe Abbey School in the same town. The school was founded in 1900.

The Church set up schools to educate priests (chantry schools) and therefore many Boys’ schools pre date girls’ schools because the eventual public schools were boys only. The prep schools therefore only prepped boys. However as girls’ schools started to become established, girls were prepped for entering these schools, hence Godstowe.

Boys prep schools do t date back to the Middle Ages. You are thinking of the oldest public schools, and not many of those either. There isn't an old history for girls's schools anyway - the oldest upper schools are Victorian. S

Were the Victorian schools day only? My local girls' prep was founded in 1884.

There were boarding schools for girls before the Victorian era.

I thought girls were home education by governess and only went to finishing schools later? Or attended schools like the one in Sara the little Princess book for parents who lived in India or Africa and send the children back to Britain.

I am sure there were some fancy orphanages though to send unwanted female relatives.

MollyBurton. Which girls boarding schools existed before the Victorian era? Certainly no girls’ boarding prep schools.

Well the foundations of Reading Abbey school are back in 1780s according to Wiki. It's where Jane Austin went to school.
Of course a boarding Prep would be harder to define as they didn't have the strict age guidelines that schools have nowadays.
And at this time most " prep schools" were basically a group of boys or girls taken into an educated persons household for a few years.

Several girl characters in period books went to boarding schools, e.g. Jane Eyre went to a horrible institution where her friend died of malnutrition. Don't think any of them survived or had great academic reputations.

Well, they were fictional, but they must have been based on real examples.