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With a very well-connected road and rail network and even its own airport (two if you count London City, just seconds from the border as the Airbus A318 flies), Essex is nothing if not well-located, and parents looking for a private senior school find that most of the county’s – and indeed the country’s – boarding schools are an easy journey away.
Essex has its own long-established independent schools offering boarding in various permutations. Day pupils too get the benefit of longer school hours and staff who often live where they work so are on hand to give extra help.
New Hall School, Felsted School and Brentwood School all have homely boarding houses on campus, where local students live alongside others from all over the UK and the world. New Hall’s dorms are described as ‘a revelation’ by our reviewer. Boys and girls as young as seven are welcome to board at New Hall, while they have to wait until year 5 (when they’re nine) at Felsted. Brentwood’s boarders are nearly all international students, but they are joined by a small number of senior-age locals in the two on-site houses (one girls’, one boys’). Holmwood House School in Colchester is an up-to-13 prep (expanding to 16 in the near future) and offers a taste of boarding for girls and boys in year 4 and up – a maximum of two nights a week, often themed and usually aimed at particular year groups. Popular with parents pondering the big name senior boarding schools.
Boarding schools near Essex
Of course, there are many more boarding schools in easily accessible neighbouring counties. Essex families’ favourites are schools deeper into East Anglia (such as Woodbridge School, Ipswich School, Ipswich High School and The Royal Hospital School in Suffolk and Gresham’s in Norfolk), as well as in Hertfordshire (Bishop’s Stortford College and Haileybury), the East Midlands (Oakham, Uppingham and Oundle) and Kent (Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and King’s Canterbury); even those much further afield may tempt them away.