Where should I live - Shrewsbury House and LEH

[SchoolMama]

Hoping to get advice on where to live from some local mums. I will have one child starting at Shrewsbury House and another at Lady Eleanor Holles in September. Where should we live? DD will take bus to LEH but don’t want it to be nightmare commute either. Would love Twickenham for village feel/shops /restaurants/reasonable links to London and river but seems like might be a stretch if I ever have to do school run for both kids. What are closer alternatives with similar vibe?

You need to move to Hampton Court/Esher/Thames Ditton! Lots of families have that combination of schools with the dd travelling to LEH using the school bus. Crossing the river at HC or Kingston is a nightmare! If you want to move to Twickenham then look at a Twickenham/Richmond boys prep. If you look at the Shrewsbury house bus routes you can see that no one travels from the Twickenham area.
Send me a PM if you want more details, I'm very familiar with both journeys as a school run.

Thank you! What about Teddington? Still too far? Google maps say round trip would be about an hour: Teddington-LEH-SHS-Teddington. Is that realistic?

No, there is no school traffic at the moment, you queue to cross each bridge normally Also Teddington DS go to Newland House or The Mall. It would help if you added your dc ages and I can understand the reluctance to use the coach system for LEH. 1 option is to have a live in au pair who stays with 1 child while you take the other to breakfast club or a nanny to share the driving each day. The Shrewsbury House pre-preps are Claygate/ Wimbledon / these are the directions the ds travel to/from. LEH juniors takes from all over - Chiswick/ isleworth/ Hounslow plus the immediate TW area and Surrey.

Also look at Claygate, it has a lovely village feel with a direct train to London and a school bus stop for LEH.

Thank you - will take a look at those options!

I don't have a daughter there but I gather the LEH juniors breakfast club
from 7.30am is popular with the girls if you don't want the coach option.

I have a ds who uses the Hampton/LEH coach but is much older, you can pm me if you want more details. Best of luck with your house search, they are both great schools.

My son goes to Shrewsbury and think they’re amenable to putting on buses from where they need to.

Thank you Eshermum! Very good to know!

Considering Wimbledon as both schools pick up from there on coaches. Thinking area just west/South of Kings College School. Does anyone know how ling it takes from there to LEH? Want to know what sort of commute DD would be looking at. Thank you for your feedback!

You could look a little further out too. I took the school coach from Cobham to LEH every day for 11 years. Looks a long way on paper but it bought my parents an extra 1.5 hours child free work time every day and it was genuinely fun spending that time with friends. Classmates from Walton, Weybridge, Oxshott and Esher all found the distance just fine. Hope your DC love their new schools!

@SchoolMama , Is your dd going to LEH juniors? If so I would ring/email the lady who runs the bus service, her email address is on the bus page of the LEH website. Explain your situation and ask how many LEH junior girls currently travel on each Wimbledon route - there are 2. It won't be many mainly because there are so many great prep schools in Wimbledon area.

Thank you so much Harvey and Sating! DD going into year 9. Yes have checked about numbers of girls in the year and have been told there are plenty. Good to know the coach experience was enjoyable. DD is up for it so might rent there first to try it out. :)