Warminster School is a co-educational independent boarding and day school in Warminster, Wiltshire, England, for pupils aged three to eighteen. Initially established in 1707, the school took its current form in 1973 with the amalgamation of Lord Weymouth's Grammar School and St Monica's. It now comprises the Preparatory School, for pupils aged three to eleven, and the Senior School for students aged eleven to eighteen.

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Warminster School
Location
Warminster , Wiltshire , BA12 8PJ England
Coordinates	51.208°N 2.189°W / 51.208; -2.189
Information
Type	Public School Private day and boarding
Religious affiliation(s)	Church of England
Established	1707
Founder	Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth
Department for Education URN	126522 Tables
Ofsted	Reports
Headmaster	Matt Williams
Gender	Mixed
Age	3 to 18
Number of students	551 (April 2023)
Houses	Arnold, Denys, Finch, Ken
Colour(s)
Former pupils	Old Verlucians[1]
Website	www.warminsterschool.org.uk

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The school's buildings lie in grounds which face open country on the edge of Warminster town centre. The Preparatory School is on a neighbouring site.

In 1707, Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth, under the influence of Bishop Thomas Ken (1637–1711), founded a grammar school for boys in the market town of Warminster, near to his family seat of Longleat, to instruct the boys of Warminster, Longbridge Deverill, and Monkton Deverill in Latin, mathematics, and other subjects of the usual syllabus of the day. This became known as Lord Weymouth's Grammar School – referred to locally as the "Latin School" – and by the 20th century was called The Lord Weymouth School.

Lord Weymouth (1640–1714) was descended from the first Sir John Thynne of Longleat House. In 1673 he married Lady Francis Finch, a daughter of the Earl of Winchelsea, and lived at Drayton Basset, near Tamworth. He was Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford (1674–1679), and High Steward of Tamworth in 1679. In 1680 he was created Baron Thynne and in 1682 Viscount Weymouth. He was High Steward of the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield from 1679 to 1714. His three sons all predeceased him.

For much of its history, Lord Weymouth's School was small. While Henry Dison Gabell was its schoolmaster, from 1790 to 1793, he had twenty boys to teach on the foundation, for which he was paid £30 a year, but had the right to supplement this by taking private pupils.^[2]

While the history of Lord Weymouth's School goes back to 1707, the school in its current form was created in 1973 by the merger of Lord Weymouth's, a boys' school, and the girls' school St Monica's, which had been founded in 1874 by the nuns of the St Denys Retreat. The present-day school also occupies some buildings once used by the former St Boniface Missionary College and the St Denys Convent and retreat.

In 2007 the school celebrated the tercentenary of the founding of Lord Weymouth's Grammar School with a series of events, including a Service of Thanksgiving in Salisbury Cathedral, at which the Bishop of Salisbury spoke about the school's history, and with a Royal Visit when Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, opened the new Wessex Science Centre.

Warminster Preparatory School takes children from three to eleven years old and shares grounds and facilities with the senior school, which is for the age range eleven to eighteen. More than half the school is involved in music and about 120 pupils learn an instrument. A large number is engaged in dramatic activities.

In 2015, the school was featured in the ITV documentary School Swap: The Class Divide. The two-part documentary featured Jo Ward, (headteacher of the state-funded Bemrose School, Derby) and three pupils undertaking an exchange with pupils at Warminster School to explore the differences between state and private education.^[7]

Former pupils of Lord Weymouth's School, St. Monica's and Warminster School, are called Old Verlucians and include:

Lord Weymouth's School

• Thomas Arnold, innovative educator, Head Master of Rugby School from 1828 to 1842 immortalised in Tom Brown's Schooldays
• Guy Boothby, Australian writer and librettist
• Freddie Bartholomew, a child actor, popular in 1930s Hollywood films such as Anna Karenina (1935) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936)
• James Ingram (1774–1850), an Oxford don originally from Codford St Mary, was Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon and President of Trinity College, Oxford
• Frederick Jaeger (1928–2004), a German-born actor
• Samuel Squire, Bishop of St Davids.
• A. B. Walkley, drama critic of The Times from 1900 to 1926.
• Robert Walter, Conservative Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2015.
• Tyrone Urch, British Army officer - Lieutenant General and Commander Home Command (2018)

Warminster School

• Christina Chan, Hong Kong political activist^[8][9][10]

• Sarah Dyke, Member of Parliament
• James Vince, Hampshire and England cricketer

The pupils of Warminster School are split between four competitive 'houses' across all ages and boarding houses; Arnold, Denys, Finch, Ken.

• Arnold; named after Thomas Arnold, an Old Verlucian of considerable note: an educator and historian, and an early supporter of the broad church Anglican movement. His appointment to the headship of the renowned Rugby School in 1828, after some years as a tutor, turned the school's fortunes around, and his force of character and religious zeal enabled him to turn it into a model followed by the other public schools, exercising an unprecedented influence on the educational system of the country. He is portrayed as a leading character in the novel Tom Brown's Schooldays.
• Denys; named after the order established by Rev. Philipps which led to the creation of St. Monica's School for Girls and St. Denys House. St Denys (Denis) is a Christian martyr and saint. In the third century, he was Bishop of Paris. He was martyred in approximately A.D. 250, and is venerated in the Roman Catholic Church as patron of Paris, and as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Denis, having alarmed the pagan priests by his many conversions, was executed by beheading on the highest hill in Paris (now Montmartre).
• Ken; named after Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who was considered the most eminent of the English non-juring bishops, and one of the fathers of modern English hymnology. He was influential in the founding of Lord Weymouth's School when, in retirement, he found a congenial home with Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth, his friend from college days, at Longleat in Wiltshire. He died there on 19 March 1711, only four years after helping found the school. He was buried at the Church of St John the Baptist, Frome where his crypt can still be seen. He is remembered in the Church of England with a Lesser Festival on 8 June, and is honoured with a feast day in the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on 20 March.
• Finch; named after Frances Finch, the wife of Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth, the school’s founder. She was the daughter of Heneage Finch, 3rd Earl of Winchilsea. Finch house was established by the school in 2020.

Behind School House stands a fives court, built in 1860. One source states that Lord Weymouth's school had a court before 1787.^[11] Fives has some similarities to squash: the court is similar in size but has a stone floor. No racket is required, only a pair of padded gloves. The rules for Warminster Fives are documented by the Eton Fives Association.^[12]

Warminster Fives is likely to be the same game as Wessex Fives, which originated some centuries ago, when men and boys sometimes used the buttresses and walls of a church and hit the ball with their hands against the walls – the angles of the buttresses and walls lending variety to the game. Several versions of fives were developed, the most common today being Eton Fives.