We hope, on the children’s return to school, you will take pleasure in four significant projects that the estates and grounds teams have undertaken or managed around the school over the summer holidays. They all contribute to the refurbishment and upkeep of the school’s infrastructure.

Of these, the largest and most obvious project has been to refurbish the Theatre. The building has many constraints, not least because it started life as the gym for Red Rice School – a fact that was reinforced when we stripped back the flooring and revealed the old markings for the original basketball courts! This space has now been completely transformed to become a much-improved performance facility as well as a more enjoyable area for assemblies and other larger gatherings. It is safer, better ventilated and heated, has dramatically (sorry) improved space in the wings and adaptability for different performance mediums including a thrust stage and theatre in the round. It now sports both air conditioning and state-of-the-art LED lighting. You will see that its new interior design is strikingly modern. On this note, Mr Hession requests that stiletto heels are avoided for all functions taking place inside the Theatre, as their spikes are incompatible with our new specialised performance flooring!

Another change that will make a huge difference to the girls in the prep school is the complete renovation of their changing rooms in the Sports Hall. These four rooms were gutted and renewed, largely by our in-house maintenance team, and they’ve done a fabulous job. Everyone will have their own lockable locker, there is much more space and the rooms have a lovely light, streamlined feel to them.

Two further projects include a large, functional store for sport and assembly equipment, which has been built behind the sports hall; this provides much needed space for gym apparatus as well as the chairs and mats that are required when the hall is used for functions. Finally, in the rock-hard ‘summer of 2022’ earth of the sports field, electric cabling has been laid across the front of the main house and right across the sports fields, past the cricket pavilion and down to the sewage farm on the far edge of the grounds, allowing much needed power to those areas. Not glamorous but entirely useful!

We very much look forward to seeing you all back on school grounds and enjoying the benefits of these uplifts during the forthcoming year.

Paul Lane
Director of Finance & Operations

August 2022