Westcott House

Westcott House was a Sherborne School boarding house from 1920 to 1999.

The oldest portion of Westcott House, formerly named Grosvenor Lodge, was built in the 1860s on the site of an orchard by John Young Melmoth (1806-1876), an Old Shirburnian and a Governor of Sherborne School.

From 1876 to 1880, Grosvenor Lodge was occupied by Colonel Thomas Rattray CB, CSI (1820-1880), retired Bengal Staff Corps, who in 1856 had raised the Bengal Military Police Battalion better known as the 45th Rattray’s Sikhs. Colonel Rattray was married to Harriet Penelope Hare (1832-1905) whose brother, Francis Augustus Hare (1830-1892), commanded the Australian police contingent that captured Ned Kelly and his gang at Glenrowan in 1880. While living at Grosvenor Lodge, Colonel Rattray’s son, Hugh Money Rattray (1863-1940), attended Sherborne School as a day boy from 1876 to 1880.  Colonel Rattray died at Grosvenor Lodge on the 21 October 1880 and the following year, in February 1881, an advertisement for the lease of the house appeared in the local press:

‘To be let, furnished, for one year from Lady Day next, – A good family residence, known as Grosvenor Lodge, standing in its own Grounds and approached from the road by Carriage Drives, containing noble Entrance Hall, Dining room, Drawing room with Conservatory attached, Breakfast room, Library, four large and lofty Bedrooms, two Dressing rooms, three Secondary Bedrooms, Bathroom, and Servants’ Bedrooms, good Domestic Offices and Cellarage, Walled Gardens with Vinerys and Forcing Houses, small Orchard, Stabling for two Horses, Carriage house, Fowls’ House, &c., &c.’

The lease of Grosvenor Lodge was taken over in 1881 by Major General William Noel Waller (1831-1909), retired Royal Artillery. His son, Reginald William Waller (1876-1914), attended Sherborne School (School House) from 1889 to 1890 and was subsequently at Malvern College. In 1896, the Waller family left Grosvenor Lodge and moved to Farmington Lodge in Gloucestershire, where Major General Waller died on 7 September 1909.

From 1900 to 1920, Grosvenor Lodge was occupied by Dr John Flasby Lawrance Whittingdale (1858-1946), the School Medical Officer 1889-1945. Two of Dr Whittingdale’s sons attended Sherborne School, John Whittingdale (1894-1974) as a day boy and at Abbeylands from 1908-1913 who later succeeded his father as the School Medical Officer, and Thomas Yeats Whittingdale (1896-1979) who attended Sherborne as a day boy from 1910 to 1913. In 1920, Dr J.F.L. Whittingdale moved to Wharton in Acreman Street, the house built by assistant master Charles Herbert Hodgson (1857-1922), where he died on 11 December 1946.

In 1919, Geoffrey O’Hanlon purchased Grosvenor Lodge for £3,500 and on 17 September 1920 opened it as a school boarding house with ten boarders. O’Hanlon renamed the house in honour of Headmaster Frederick Brooke Westcott and adopted the house colours of black and white (from Maperty a former boarding house in Westbury) and the house letter ‘h’.

Westcott House extensions, 1922. (Sherborne School Archives)

Geoffrey O’Hanlon built on to the house additional boarding accommodation for about fifty pupils and in 1925 made over the entire property to the School Governors for £5,000. In 1930, the teenaged Alan Turing set up in the stairwell at Westcott House a reconstruction of Foucault’s pendulum experiment to demonstrate the Earth’s rotation. The fireplace in the common room incorporates the stone door lintel from the town’s former workhouse (now the site of Durrant’s close) which was demolished in 1939. Westcott House’s rather austere exterior led an American GI stationed in Sherborne during the Second World War to ask whether Westcott House was the town penitentiary! Large additions were built at the back of the premises in 1965-1966.

During their visit to Sherborne School on 1 June 1950, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were welcomed at Westcott House by Housemaster Reginald Stanley Thompson and his wife.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth with Mr & Mrs Thompson at Westcott House, 1 June 1950. (Sherborne School Archives)

As a response to falling numbers, Westcott House was closed in 1999 and taken over by Sherborne International. Westcott House was due to reopen to boys from Sherborne School in September 2021, however, due to the Coronavirus lockdown, the planned refurbishment has been delayed.

Westcott House, 1992. (Sherborne School Archives)

On 30 June 2016, Sir Dermot Turing, himself a former Westcott boy, unveiled a blue plaque at Westcott House commemorating his uncle Alan Turing’s time there.

Former Westcott boys have included John Bennett (tragic explorer of British Columbia), Myles Bowen (geologist, awarded in 1992 the Outstanding Achievement Medal of the Geographical Society & in 2011 the American Association of Petroleum Geologists’ Pioneer Award), Duncan Carse (the voice of Dick Barton, Special Agent, and a highly respected polar explorer), Charles Collingwood (best known for playing Brian Aldridge in The Archers), David Cornwell (author best known for his espionage novels written under the pen name John le Carré), Richard Eyre (director and producer, winner of five Olivier awards and a BAFTA, and in 2017 was made a Companion of Honour for services to drama), Michael Hopkins (architect), Richard Hosford (BBC Symphony Orchestra, The Gaudier Ensemble), Patrick Kaboyo (Olim II of Toro), Chan Lowe (Pulitzer Prize finalist in editorial cartooning), Philip Martyn (professional backgammon player), Simon Nowell-Smith (editor Times & TLS, author, librarian), Michael O’Gorman (Sound Designer The Chieftains, Riverdance The Show), Michell Raper (broadcaster, producer, author), George Rittson-Thomas (England Rugby International), Rico Tice (Anglican priest and writer),  Alan Turing OBE FRS (mathematician, computer scientist, theoretical biologist, WW2 codebreaker), Dermot Turing (solicitor, author, trustee of Bletchley Park and of the Turing Trust), William Watherston (Scotland Rugby International), John Weston (diplomat and poet), David Innes Williams (Paediatric urological surgeon, Pro-Vice Chancellor, London University, President of the BMA & the Royal Society of Medicine, Chairman of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund), Duncan Wilson CBE (chief executive of Historic England), Oliver Wilson (landlord of the Digby Tap).

Turing Blue Plaque at Westcott House, unveiled by Sir Dermot Turing on 30 June 2017. (Sherborne School Archives)

House letter: h.

House colours: black and white (formerly the house colours of Maperty boarding house in Westbury).

Dormitory names:
Francis – named in memory of James Lowry Francis (1920-1945).
Job – named in memory of Martin Shipley Job (1919-1942).
Weallens – named in memory of Robert Frank Courtney Weallens (1905-1944).

House magazines: West Side Story, The Executioner.

House cricket team (played local villages): The Wagtails.

Housemasters:
1920     Geoffrey O’Hanlon MC (1885-1975)
1936     Reginald Stanley Thompson (1899-1994)
1952     Frank King (1911-1996)
1966     William Alwin Cooper (1923-2011)
1981     Robert Lloyd
1986     Paul Carling
1994     Don Cameron
1999     House closed

Online Resources:

For further information about the Sherborne School Archives please contact the School Archivist

Return to the School Archives homepage