University College School, Hampstead

University College School — universally known as UCS — was founded in 1830 by University College London (UCL) as its junior department, and was the first major English school established explicitly outside the religious establishment of the time. UCL had been founded in 1826 as the first secular university in England (the so-called "godless college on Gower Street"), and UCS adopted the same principle: it required no religious tests of its pupils or staff, opening doors that had been closed at Eton, Westminster and the other Anglican public schools to families of dissenting, Jewish, Catholic and freethinking backgrounds. This religious neutrality remains a foundational identity.

The school moved from central London to its present Frognal site in Hampstead in 1907. The Edwardian buildings — including the Grade II listed Great Hall with its monumental Walker organ — were designed by Arnold Mitchell and remain in active use. UCS today is a member of the HMC and educates around 1,180 pupils across the UCS Hampstead Foundation: the Pre-Prep (ages 3-7) at Finchley Road; the Junior Branch (7-11) on the Holly Hill site in Hampstead; and the Senior School (11-16 boys; 16-18 co-educational sixth form) on Frognal. The Headmaster since 2013 is Mark Beard, previously a Deputy Head at Westminster.

UCS's modern cultural profile is shaped overwhelmingly by its comedic and literary alumni. Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie both attended UCS in the early 1970s, met as schoolboys and went on through Cambridge Footlights to A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, Blackadder and (in Laurie's case) the Emmy-winning lead role in House. Sir John Mortimer QC — barrister and creator of Rumpole of the Bailey — was a UCS pupil in the 1930s. Jonathan Miller, the polymath director, satirist and neuroscientist who co-created Beyond the Fringe and directed seminal opera productions at ENO, also attended.

In science, the climatologist Sir John Houghton — who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the 1990s and shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007 — was a UCS pupil. The cultural historian Lord Frayling, formerly Rector of the Royal College of Art, is another Old Gower. UCS operates a substantial bursary programme and remains one of the most academically and culturally distinctive of London's HMC day schools.