Woldingham School is a Roman Catholic independent school for girls, located in the former Marden Park of 700 acres (2.8km2) outside the village of Woldingham, Surrey, in South East England.
The school was founded as the Convent of the Sacred Heart in 1842 in Berrymead, London by the Society of the Sacred Heart; the first Convent of the Sacred Heart in England. The Society had been founded in France in 1800 by Madeleine Sophie Barat (canonized in 1925) immediately after the French Revolution (1789–1799). The first Sacred Heart school had opened in 1801 at Amiens, France; others were soon established in France and across Europe.
The Convent of the Sacred Heart moved to Roehampton, London, in 1850. Shortly after the 1939 outbreak of World War II, the school was evacuated, first to Newquay and later to Stanford Hall, near Rugby. Because the Roehampton site was damaged during the air raids of 1940, the school decided, at the end of war, to find a new location. Marden Park was purchased by the Society in 1945, and the school moved in one year later. Early in the 1980s, the Society decided to commit the school to lay management under the trusteeship of the Society. In 1984, Philomena Dineen was appointed first lay Head of School for the newly renamed Woldingham School; she took up her duties in January 1985.
Woldingham is a village and civil parish high on the North Downs in Surrey within the M25, 17.5 miles (28.2km)south-by-southeast of London; its buildings lie at 150–248m AOD. Situated between Oxted and Warlingham, the village has 2,141 inhabitants. Central London can be reached in 33minutes by train and the village is served by the Oxted lines. Many of Woldingham's inhabitants work in Croydon or central London, making Woldingham part of the London commuter belt.
History
Early history
Two bronze fibulae, some stone arrow-heads and celts were found here about 1800.
Dark and Middle Ages
The village lay within the Anglo-Saxon administrative division of Tandridgehundred. It appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Wallingeham and was held by John from Richard Fitz Gilbert. Its domesday assets were: 1 hide. It had 4½ ploughs. It rendered £1. No church is mentioned in Woldingham in the Domesday Survey. A chapel is first mentioned in 1295 as appurtenant to Gilbert de Clare's part of Woldingham; there has always been a vicar rather than a rector.
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Brought up by nannies and sent away to boarding school at six, Isabella's young life was overshadowed by trauma and her family's notoriety ... She wanted to go there to be near to one of her oldest friends from WoldinghamSchool, Surrey.
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When Carey was older, they sent her to Woldingham in Surrey, a leading Catholic independent school for girls ... The star was privately educated at Woldingham School, went to Cambridge and had a father who was a businessman and a speech therapist mother.
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For example, WoldinghamSchool in Surry worked with an organisation called Using LessStuff, reducing their carbon footprint and annual energy bill by £35,000 and cutting heating costs by 15% ...Steps to start making the change today in your school.
