Charterhouse School
Charterhouse School is a British public school, located in Godalming in the county of Surrey. It was founded by William Sutton in London in 1611 on the site of the old Charterhouse Monastery in Charterhouse Square, Smithfield, and moved to its present site in 1872 by the then headmaster, the Revd. Dr. Haig Brown.
The school chapel was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (perhaps best known for designing the red telephone box) and consecrated in 1927 to commemorate almost 700 pupils who died in the First World War, making it the largest war memorial in England. Around 350 names have been subsequently added to commemorate those who died in the Second World War and other conflicts of the twentieth century.
Recent additions to the campus include seven new Houses built in the 1970s, the Art Studio, the John Derry Technology Centre, the Ben Travers Theatre, the Ralph Vaughan Williams Music Centre, the Halford Hewitt Golf Course, the Queen?s Sports Centre, the Sir Greville Spratt athletics track and Chetwynd, a hall of residence for girls.
As the alma mater of the now disgraced and imprisoned pop mogul Jonathan King, and of all members of Genesis apart from Phil Collins and Steve Hackett, Charterhouse can claim a major role in originating the dramatic cultural changes to have affected the British public school classes in recent times.
Charterhouse and the origins of football
Charterhouse was one of a select group of English public schools who can claim to have helped shape the rules of modern football. Even today, football is preferred as the school?s main winter sport over rugby.
When the rules of Association Football were created in 1863, elements of the Charterhouse version of the game were adopted, along with the rules established at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Westminster and Winchester.
In the early years of the FA Cup, teams formed of ex-pupils from these schools dominated the competition. The Old Carthusians (the name for Charterhouse alumni) won the cup in the 1880/81 season and were semi-finalists in the two years that followed. The public school system also provided many of the first England internationals.
They included Charles Wreford Brown, who is often credited for inventing the word ?soccer?. He was a pupil at Charterhouse in the early 1880s, and played football for the Old Carthusians and for the national side in the 1890s, including several appearances as captain.
Famous pupils
