Harrodian School

The Harrodian School is one of the most distinctive of the new generation of English independent schools, founded in September 1993 by Sir Alford Houstoun-Boswall on the site of the former Harrods Sports and Social Club (the company sports ground for employees of Harrods department store) in Lonsdale Road, Barnes. The setting alongside Hammersmith Bridge on the south bank of the Thames provided a substantial campus that grew into the present co-educational HMC day school of around 1,044 pupils aged 4-18. The Principal is James Hooke; the Chairman is Sir Alford Houstoun-Boswall.

Harrodian has become particularly noted as a feeder for British actors making the transition into Hollywood. The most internationally famous Old Harrodian is Robert Pattinson — the actor who became globally famous as Edward Cullen in the Twilight film series (2008-12), then transformed his career into a leading-man role in serious cinema with Christopher Nolan's Tenet, Matt Reeves's The Batman, Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse, the Safdie brothers' Good Time, and most recently the Bong Joon-ho film Mickey 17. Tom Sturridge, the actor who played the Pirate Radio DJ Carl and Sal Paradise in Walter Salles's On the Road, and who plays Morpheus in Netflix's The Sandman, attended Harrodian alongside Pattinson. Cara Delevingne — the model, actress and writer who went on to international fashion-modelling fame and roles in Anna Karenina, Paper Towns and Suicide Squad — and her older sister Poppy Delevingne, also a model and actress, were both Harrodians. The actor Theo James (Divergent, Sanditon, The Gentlemen) and the actress and singer Suki Waterhouse are also alumni of the school.

This dense concentration of Hollywood-bound creative talent passing through a relatively small London independent school across a few overlapping years in the early 2000s is unusual in the modern British public school system. The school operates a substantial bursary programme.