Ditcham Park School
| Ditcham Park School | |
|
Hampshire | |
|---|---|
 Ditcham Park School | |
| Type: | School |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SU74851771 |
| Location: | 50°57’14"N, -0°56’9"W |
| Village: | Buriton |
| History | |
| Built 1888 | |
| For: | Laurence Trent Cave |
| School | |
| Information | |
| Website: | ditchampark.com |
Ditcham Park School is a co-educational, independent school in the parish of Buriton, near Petersfield, in Hampshire. Its buildings are a former country house Ditchfield Park, built in 1888.
The school stands on the southern spur of Oakham Hill (663 feet), one of the highest points on the South Downs, a mile to the south of the village of Buriton and a mile north-east of the hamlet of Chalton. The premises were previously owned by Douai School (which closed in 1999) and housed its Junior School until 1975.
The school is on the South Downs Way, which the school makes use of for its Duke of Edinburgh Award programme.
Facilities
The school grounds include a walled garden, tennis courts and sports fields, which adjoin several farms and forests; the main section of the school is a Victorian manor house, built by Sir Reginald Blomfield in 1887. A Technology and Arts building was added in 2001, a new sports hall in 2008 and renovations of the science block made in 2012. In 2017 a new, purpose-built Junior classroom block was completed.
The school has its own drama theatre.
House history
Ditcham Park was developed beside an ancient entrenchment on the chalk lands of the South Downs, on the Hampshire side of the county border. The lands are first mentioned in Domesday Book ending up in 1545 in the hands of John and Margaret Cowper. These consisted of two farms, Old Ditcham and Sunwood Farm, and large areas of wooded slopes and high down land. Richard Cowper left the estate in 1762 to his cousin John Coles.
Coles built a new house on top of the down, arranging planting including specimen trees in a small, landscaped park and building a walled garden. He called it 'Ditcham Grove'. It was probably he who added an ice-house in the Park Field just south of the house. Views to the south across Chalton Down to the coast and to the Isle of Wight were and still are magnificent. A southern approach drive swept up in curves through fields and woods, though the more spectacular approach drive was not developed until after 1885 by the Cave family. This was from the north affording a series of viewpoints of ‘borrowed' landscape of encircling hills and valleys from Petersfield in the west to Harting in the east and beyond. The easterly views encompass Lady Holt Park in Sussex, Ditcham's immediate neighbour which was part of this ‘borrowing'.
Let to the Bonham Carters for ten years in the mid-19th-century, the property of 1,600 acres was sold in 1868 to Charles Cammell who changed the name of the house to 'Ditcham House'. He sold it in 1885 to Laurence Trent Cave who built a new house on the same site, which burnt down just after completion so was rebuilt in 1888.
Laurence Trent Cave bought the Estate in 1887 and engaged the architect Sir Reginald Blomfield to build the house and also to build St. Lawrence's Catholic Church in Petersfield. In 1940 the house was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and used as a convalescent home for sailors and served by trains stopping at Woodcroft halt. After the war it became a boys preparatory school run by Douai School Monks and then in September 1976 Ditcham Park School was founded by Paddy Holmes.