The Philberds was a preparatory school based in a house in Holyport, near Maidenhead, Berkshire, on the site of one which Charles II had given to Nell Gwyn. The name derives from a family which owned land in the area in mediaeval times.
Edward Henry Price (1822–1898) was educated at Rugby School under Thomas Arnold, arriving in May 1835 aged 13.[1] He matriculated at St John's College, Cambridge in 1841, graduating B.A. in 1845, M.A. in 1863.[2]
Ordained deacon in 1845 and priest in 1846, Price spent the years 1845 to 1853 at Lutterworth as a curate.[2] He founded The Philberds in 1862, having previously founded a school at Tarvin in Cheshire which he moved to become Mostyn House School, in Cheshire, in 1855. In 1862 he sold Mostyn House School to Algernon Sydney Grenfell.[3]
Price was headmaster of The Philberds from 1862 until 1879.[2] The initial school fee was 80 guineas per annum.[4] He succeeded in building the reputation of Philberds as a preparatory school. He then took the living of Kimbolton.[5]
Frederick William Stephen Price, one of the sons, took over the school. He later was head of Ovingdean Hall School.[3] In 1885, the partnership he had with his brother Edward Matthew Price as schoolmasters at The Philberds was dissolved.[6] He left the school in the charge of his brother Edward and another brother, Herbert Johnson Price.[3][7]
In 1898 Frank Watkinson took over the school—an Oxford B.A. in 1892, he had been an assistant master at Mostyn House School.[8] In 1904 Charles R. Lupton moved his school from Farnborough, Hampshire to The Philberds.[9]
The school survived until the start of World War I. During the war, the manor building was used as an internment camp for German prisoners of war,[10] and in 1919 was demolished.
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