The College was founded in Petersfield in the 1720s by the will of Richard Churcher to educate local boys in the skills needed for service in the East India Company.
The headmaster is Simon Williams who replaced Geoffrey Buttle in September 2004. Alumni are known as Old Churcherians or OCs.
History
The school was founded under the will of Richard Churcher in 1722. Churcher was a wealthy local philanthropist who had made his fortune through interests in the British East India Company. His will, dated 1722, decreed that the College was to educate:
10 or 12 local boys from Petersfield, of any age from 9 to 14, in the arts of writing, arithmetic, mathematics and navigation so they could be apprenticed to masters of ships sailing in the East Indies.
Under the terms of the will, Churcher's College was created from a £3000 gift as a non-denominational foundation, a status it has kept to this day. The original school, built in 1729, is in College Street. The school became increasingly popular due to its successes, and in 1881 moved to its present location in Ramshill, accommodating 150 boys, on land donated by the J&W Nicholson & Co family of gin makers.[2]
Original College building, College Street
From 1946 to 1964 Broadlands, opposite the college grounds in Ramshill, was the preparatory school for Churcher's.[3] It was Grade II listed in 1949.[4]
For much of the 20th century Churcher's College operated as a voluntary aidedgrammar school. In 1979, Hampshire County Council decided to cease to maintain the college, which became an independent fee-paying school.[5] The school's expanding population (by the mid-20th century the school educated some 400 boys, of whom about a quarter boarded in three separate houses: Mount House, Ramshill House and School house)[citation needed] has necessitated the addition of a number of modern buildings alongside the original 1881 buildings.
Girls were first admitted to the Sixth Form in 1980, and the school became fully co-educational in 1988. Reflecting its naval history, the college's houses are named after the naval heroes Drake, Grenville, Nelson and Rodney, with the later addition of Collingwood.
In 1993 the school purchased Moreton House School[6][7] in Petersfield, which became Churcher's College Junior School. Like the senior school before it, the junior school is very successful, and soon outgrew its premises. Following an unsuccessful attempt to relocate in Petersfield, the school eventually purchased an existing school campus in Liphook (Littlefield's School), which from 2003 became the junior school's new site.
Pupils at the school play rugby, hockey, netball and cricket. The College was the first school to affiliate to the Hampshire RFU in 1924. OC Frank Guy was responsible for the founding of local rugby union club Petersfield R.F.C. in 1927. In 2015, Churcher's won the NatWest Schools Cup under-18 Vase with 13-5 victory over SEEVIC College, the first Hampshire school to do so.[9]
^'BOXSHALL, Dr Geoffrey Allan', Who's Who 2013, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2013; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2012; online edn, Nov 2012 accessed 8 July 2013
Atcheson, Nathaniel & Robert, The history of Churcher's College, Petersfield, Hants: with a sketch of the life of Mr. Richard Churcher, the founder. 1823. Google -BookInternet Archive J Butterworth & Son. New York Public Library.
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