ABSTRACT
The harshness of life in pre-Victorian England was true not only for the newly emerging industrial masses but also for the gradually increasing number of boys of middle and upper class families attending England’s now increasing number of boarding schools. Symptomatic of this age, school rebellions — sometimes so serious that the militia was called in to quell them — were frequent. All the schools described so far no longer exist. Five of them became an elite to which dukes would be pleased to send their sons. These were the famous five: Cheam, Eagle Ffouse, Temple Grove, Twyford and Wind-lesham House. Windlesham House differed from other early preparatory schools, too, in the instability of its early years. Whereas Cheam School did not move site to Headley in the Berkshire till 1934; nor Temple Grove to Eastbourne in Sussex till 1907.
