Cranleigh School

Cranleigh School was founded in 1865 as a Church of England middle-class boarding school in the Surrey Hills, on the model of the Woodard Anglican school movement, although Cranleigh has always been independent of the Woodard Corporation. The school was established to provide affordable boarding education for the sons of farmers, clergymen and middle-class professional families. The 280-acre campus sits in the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, between Guildford and Horsham, and remains one of the most beautifully sited boarding schools in southern England. The Head is Martin Reader.

Cranleigh became co-educational in 1999 and today educates around 961 pupils ages 7-18, with the substantial majority boarding. The school is a member of the HMC and the Boarding Schools Association. It is one of around fourteen UK schools that maintain an annual cricket fixture at Lord's, and the Cranleigh cricket programme has produced multiple county and a handful of England Test cricketers.

The school's most politically significant alumnus is Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon — Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving Cabinet minister, who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1979-83), Foreign Secretary (1983-89) and Deputy Prime Minister (1989-90). His resignation speech in the House of Commons on 13 November 1990 — in which he attacked Thatcher's European policy and likened her treatment of her Cabinet ministers to a cricket captain breaking his batsmen's bats before sending them to the crease — directly triggered the Conservative leadership challenge that brought Thatcher down a week later, one of the most consequential political speeches of the post-war period.

In business, Sir John Bond, the former Chairman of HSBC, was an Old Cranleighan. In acting, Toby Jones — the BAFTA-winning actor whose roles include Truman Capote in Capote, Percy Alleline in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Lance Stater in The Detectorists — was at Cranleigh. The Wing Commander John Anstee, a Bomber Command Lancaster pilot, was an Old Cranleighan.

The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the Cranleigh Foundation.