Wycombe Abbey

Wycombe Abbey was founded in 1896 by Dame Frances Dove — a graduate of Girton College Cambridge and one of the leading Victorian advocates of academic education for girls — explicitly as England's premier girls' boarding school, modelled on the senior boys' boarding schools of Eton and Harrow. Dove acquired Wycombe Abbey House — a Gothic Revival country house designed by James Wyatt in the 1790s — and set up a substantial Anglican girls' boarding school with the explicit intent of providing girls with the academic and intellectual education available to boys at the top public schools. The school today operates on a 170-acre rural campus at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. The Headmistress is Jo Duncan.

Wycombe Abbey is girls-only ages 11-18 with around 644 pupils, predominantly boarding. The school is a member of the GSA and the Boarding Schools Association. Wycombe Abbey is consistently ranked among the top one or two UK girls' schools by A-Level results and Oxbridge offer rate — often the single highest girls' boarding school in the UK by Oxbridge offers as a fraction of leavers.

The school's alumnae include the Conservative Cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom, Baroness Leadsom (Energy Secretary, Leader of the House of Commons, runner-up to Theresa May for the Conservative leadership 2016), and many other distinguished figures across UK politics, academia and the arts. The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the Wycombe Abbey Foundation.