Caterham School
Caterham School is a co-educational day and boarding public school in Caterham, Surrey and is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.
Founded as 'The Congregational School' during the Regency era, a charitable institution to educate the sons of Congregationalist clergy, Caterham developed into providing a public school education which was made co-educational in 1995. In September 2025, Caterham was shortlisted for the 2026 'Tatler Schools Guide
Caterham is recognised internationally for its approach to digital learning. It was among the first schools in the United Kingdom to introduce an iPad rollout in 2015 as an Apple Distinguished School and among the first in the world to develop its own subsidiary artificial intelligence company. It has been recognised by the Westminster Education Foundation think tank as a member of the EdTech 50 since 2019.
Campus
Caterham's campus is on the edge of its estate which extends to around. It is set within Harestone Valley, and a large part of the estate consists of Oldpark Wood. The school owns the large 'Hare stone' that named the valley, which was first recorded in 1605 but is believed to be older.Notable people who formally opened or laid foundation stones for buildings at Caterham include HRH Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, Lord Carey of Clifton, Samuel Morley and William Hulme Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme.
Old School
At the front of Caterham is the Old School, designed by E.C. Robins and finished in 1884. Its foundation stone was laid in 1883 by Samuel Morley. In 2011 the Old School was housing Caterham's administration, the Wilberforce Hall and the Townsend and Viney boarding houses.The Old School has two facades. The Main Front faces Harestone Valley Road and the Main Court is the space in between them. Originally the Main Court was an open lawn but was later replaced with roads to ease the traffic in and out of the valley. The Home Front of the Old School faces Home Field.
The Main Court is the venue of Caterham's annual classic car show.
Vestibule and Concourse
The vestibule at Caterham is the formal entrance which houses Sir William Reynolds-Stephens' memorial for the Old Caterhamians who died in the First World War. The vestibule joins to a long corridor that spans the horizontal axis of the Old School, which in the 19th century was the thoroughfare of Caterham. The vestibule leads to the Concourse.The concourse is built within the inside court of the Old School and connects it with the Pye Centre.
Wilberforce Hall
Located off the cloisters is the Wilberforce Hall - Caterham's former formal dining hall - now named after the abolitionist William Wilberforce who was a founding governor of Caterham in 1811. The Wilberforce is notable for its illumination by seven Arts-and-Crafts stained glass windows between both sides and red-white polychrome brickwork. It is now a space for lectures, concerts, fashion shows, museum exhibitions and formal luncheons, teas or dinners. The hall has, however, been used for exhibitions for over a century: the 1924 Science Exhibition there featured an aquarium and a display of motor-car engines.In November 2011, the Wilberforce Hall housed an important exhibition and auction fundraising for the school's charity programmes which featured commissioned miniature pieces "no larger than a postcard" from a number of notable artists and designers such as the architect Lord Norman Foster, the sculptor David Nash, the abstract artist Anthony Frost as well as artist and comedian Jim Moir.
The Wilberforce Hall houses Caterham's large bicentenary banner which was attached at Westminster Abbey during its bicentenary service in October 2011.
Headmaster's House and Garden
Adjoining the Old School is Headmaster's House which was, traditionally, the residence of the Headmaster of Caterham. In the 1940s it was the home of the historian D.G.E. Hall. To the front of it is the Headmaster's Garden, which is Caterham's formal garden but is now much reduced. Traditionally, the garden was both a personal space for the Headmaster and a venue for formal occasions. For a time this featured a parterre of Caterham's emblem. It remains to this day that pupils are not permitted to stand on or walk across the lawn of the Headmaster's Garden without permission and should dismount if cycling past.Maggs Library
Caterham's main library is housed in its Memorial Hall at the centre of the campus, built in 1925 to commemorate the Old Caterhamians killed in the First World War. It was designed by the architect Walter Monckton Keesey OBE OC and opened in July 1925 by the Chair of Caterham, William Hulme Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme DL.During the mid-20th century, the Memorial Hall served as Caterham's concert hall. Notably, the pianist Peter Katin performed there in 1985 and 1987. For most of the 20th century, the building also housed the Caterham School Archive before its move to updated premises within the Pye Centre.
Albert P. Maggs OC of the London antiquarian booksellers Maggs Bros later contributed to the building's conversion into the Maggs Library. The Maggs Library has one large, long reading room housing non-fiction and another reading room and a gallery space housing fiction. Many departments at Caterham also have their own libraries. Caterham Prep has also has two libraries at Shirley Goss and Mottrams and so the school as a whole has three libraries in addition to the departmental libraries, making the Maggs Library the central one.
When Miller Bourne built the Performing Arts Centre in 2015, the space in front of the Memorial Hall was redeveloped into a small stone plaza with amphitheatre seating.
Performing Arts Centre
Caterham's performing arts centre was designed by Miller Bourne, finished in 2015 and opened by Simon Callow CBE.The centre opens to the wider community on occasions, such as for the school's History Festival in November, visiting productions or for events for local primary schools. In 2021, Caterham hosted a TED
Humphreys Theatre, Deayton Theatre and studios
On the ground floor is a studio for dance and orchestral rehearsals, on the first floor is an open concourse, the Deayton Theatre of 67 seats and the Liu Recording Studio and on the first and second floors the building incorporates the older Humphreys Theatre of 338 seats. It also houses the Department of Drama and connects it with that of Music. The Humphreys now serves as the school's principal concert hall which can house its orchestra.Both the Humphreys and Deayton theatres have retractable seating which enables black-box and theatre-in-the-round arrangements. In 2024, Caterham's production of a dramatisation of George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' made use of theatre-in-the-round in the Humphreys to reflect the telescreen surveillance.
Outside, at the front of the centre is a small amphitheatre and to the side of it is the Orchard Theatre of 72 seats, located on the site of Caterham's orchard.
Davey Building
The Davey Building was opened in 2007 by Lord Carey of Clifton, the 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury and named to mark the end of Mr. Rob Davey's tenure as Headmaster. On the ground floor is the Refectory which replaced the school's Victorian dining hall. On the first floor is the Department of Physics, on the second is Chemistry and on the third is Biology. Each department has five laboratories.Pye Centre
Named after the founding sisters of Eothen, which merged with Caterham in 1995, the Pye Centre was a redevelopment of the original North Wing of the Old School. It connects the Concourse and the Wilberforce Hall to its Sixth Form Centre which consists of a downstairs Common Room and upstairs Library.It also houses Caterham's Health Centre surgery and Archives site. Prior to this, the archive was housed in a reading room on the first floor of the Maggs Library.
Rudd Hall, Leathem Complex and Home Field
Caterham's main sports field for cricket, rugby and lacrosse is Home Field which has been in use since the late-19th century. The Leathem Pavilion overlooks it on the bank, and was built as a second war memorial for Old Caterhamians who died in the Second World War after the Memorial Hall for the First World War.The pavilion housing a bar and balcony terrace was redeveloped by Miller Bourne in 2012 to include a complex of modern classrooms and fine art and dance studios. The complex was opened by HRH Prince Edward, Duke of Kent in February 2012. The Leathem Complex also houses the Christine Walker Gallery, which is Caterham's permanent art gallery named after an artist who went to Eothen.
Adjoining the Leathem Complex is the Rudd Hall, which was built in 1938 as a gymnasium and for some time was the school's second theatre, where Robert Easton performed in 1939. The stage is no longer in use, having been replaced by the modern Deayton Theatre in Caterham's Performing Arts Centre.
Sports Centre
Caterham's earliest sports buildings were the 1884 gymnasium in the inside court of the Old School and the now-demolished 1889 swimming bath opened by Sir James Whitehead, then the Mayor of London.The Sports Centre was built on the parkland opposite the Old School, and opened in November 1996 by the Olympic athlete Sebastian Coe MP. It was refurbished and extended by Miller Bourne architects in 2023 and re-opened by Dame Kelly Holmes in February 2024.