Longridge Towers School

Longridge Towers School
Location
Berwick-upon-Tweed , Northumberland , TD15 2XQ England
Information
Type	Independent day and boarding
Local authority	Northumberland
Department for Education URN	524369 Tables
Headmaster	Jonathan Lee
Gender	Coeducational
Age	3 to 18
Enrollment	250~
Houses	3
Website	http://www.lts.org.uk/

Longridge Towers School is a non-selective co-educational independent day and boarding school near Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, England, for children between the ages of three and eighteen. It is the only independent school near the town and the only independent school in the county which educates children from reception to sixth form.

School history

The main house was built during the 1870s and was once a hotel and military barracks. In 1949 it became an Ursuline convent school and remained so until 1983 when the order left Northumberland. It was then sold to a charitable trust and named Longridge Towers School. It now has some two hundred and fifty pupils and a liberal ethos. Most children are day pupils, but it also has one boarding house.

Building history

The Longridge estate was acquired, through his marriage, by Sir Hubert Edward Henry Jerningham, KCMG., FSA., who from 1881-5 had been a Liberal Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed. He was thereafter Colonial Secretary of the British Honduras (Belize)(1887-1889), Colonial Secretary (1889-1893) and Lieutenant-Governor of Mauritius (1892-1893), and Governor of Trinidad and Tobago (1897-1900). The principal building, erected as his stately home, at great cost, incorporated the very latest innovations including a hydraulic lift and gas lighting to all parts of the main house. The portico is said to have been built for a visit of the Prince of Wales just to make sure he did not get wet when alighting from his coach. When it was completed it was one of the largest private houses in the north of Northumberland, and Sir Hubert lived there until his death in the early 1920s. Lady Jerningham (d.1902) had been Annie, daughter of E. Liddell, of Benton Park, and widow of C.T. Mather of Longridge, and her statue sits on the Elizabethan town walls in Berwick-upon-Tweed looking towards the distant school. The building was afterwards, for a while a hotel, until it became a convent school.

References

• Kelly's Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes 1903, p.823.

External links

• School Website
• Profile on the ISC website