100 Years of Education, 1,000 Year of History
 
Battle Abbey School Celebrates its Centenary Year in 2012 and we are planning to make our Centenary Year a year to remember!
 
We have a host of special events and occasions planned to celebrate the Schools Past, Present and Future under the banner ‘100 years of education 1,000 years of history’. The Centenary celebration will encompass the Nursery, Prep School and Senior School sites and we are hoping to involve Battle community as much as possible in the events. We also hope to invite a large number of former pupils back to the School, primarily for our Centenary Founders Day which this year promises to be bigger than ever.
 
We are also planning to produce a number of commemorative items that will be made available at both School offices and available from this website. The items will include a special Centenary book charting the School’s 100 year history from its formation in 1912, through The Great Fire at the Abbey in 1931, through two World Wars, and up to present day.
 
More on the Schools planned Centenary events can be found on the Centenary Calendar in this section of the website and more content will be made available online as it becomes finalised.
 
The birth of Battle Abbey School
 
The School was founded in 1912, as St. Etheldreda's, Bexhill by May Jacoby and her sister Helen Sheehan-Dare. Following early success and growing numbers the school moved to Battle Abbey in 1922 with 33 girls, where it became tenants of the Webster family. Within the year there were 100 girls and the Board of Education officially recognized the school in 1926.
 
Twice in its history the School has been obliged to leave the Abbey. After the fire in January 1931, when a large part of the building was destroyed; the two years required for re-building were spent at Bolney Court. Bolney, and during the War, it was housed for five and a half years at Killerton Park, Devon.
 
Miss Sheehan-Dare retired in November 1963 and Battle Abbey School became in independent Public School under a Board of Governors. There are many significant occasions in the schools’ history; to name a few there is the admission of day girls in 1973; and the admission of boys in 1989 when the acquisition of Glengorse provided a Prep School and later the merger with Charters Ancaster moving the Prep school to Bexhill.