Claremont Fan Court School

Claremont Fan Court School was founded in 1922 on the historic Claremont estate at Esher, Surrey — an estate originally laid out by the landscape architect Lancelot "Capability" Brown for Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive of India, the founder of British India. Clive's Palladian mansion, completed in 1774, still stands at the heart of the school grounds and is Grade I listed by Historic England. The estate's subsequent residents form a remarkable cast of European royalty: Princess Charlotte of Wales, the daughter of the Prince Regent (later George IV), lived at Claremont with her husband Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg until her death in childbirth in 1817; Queen Victoria spent much of her early childhood at Claremont with her uncle Leopold; and the deposed French king Louis-Philippe lived in exile at Claremont with his family from 1848 until his death in 1850.

The school was founded in 1922 by the British arm of the Christian Science movement and operated for many decades as a Christian Science school. The Christian Science connection has now lapsed and the school operates as a mainstream independent. Claremont Fan Court today educates around 1,189 pupils, ages 2-18, in a Nursery, Pre-Prep, Prep, Senior and Sixth Form structure. Unusually for a co-educational school, the Senior School (Years 7-11) operates as separate parallel Boys' and Girls' divisions before reuniting as a single co-educational Sixth Form (Years 12-13). The Head of School is William Brierly.

The school is a member of the ISA and is inspected by the ISI. The 100-acre estate provides remarkable academic and co-curricular facilities including extensive sports pitches, a competition pool, performing-arts spaces in the original Clive mansion, and a particularly strong drama tradition that takes advantage of the historic Capability Brown grounds. The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the Claremont Fan Court Foundation.