The Princess of Wales spent many happy years studying at Marlborough College in Wiltshire – but the exclusive school had a bit of a raucous past, according to one former pupil
It won’t be long before Prince George finishes his time at Lambrook and heads off to secondary school. And while Princess Kate and Prince William have not yet confirmed where their son will head next, according to numerous reports, their top choice for their eldest child is Marlborough College, which the Princess herself attended between 1996 and 2000.
The co-educational boarding school is one of the country’s most prestigious facilities, where fees reportedly come in at an eye-watering £19,714.20 each term / £59.142.60 a year. And while it has attracted some notable alumni – including Kate – it once had a very wild side, according to one former pupil.
Journalist Lebby Eyres joined the school in 1988 and she has now lifted the lid on what went on behind the scenes. According to Lebby, at the time she attended, female pupils who attended Marlborough were ‘howled’ at by boys in their shared houses when we first walked into house assembly. And “marks out of 10 were given to the girls eating in the dreaded Norwood Hall dining room”.
Weekends, meanwhile, were usually spent ‘oating’ – the pupils’ code word for ‘snogging’ – and drinking in the local pubs while trying to avoid getting ‘gated’, the equivalent to being grounded. “If you had snogged someone (or worse), the Hall would erupt to the sound of 800 trays being bashed on the tables,” she said.
Lebby, who attended the school alongside Samantha Cameron, told for The Sun that pupils would usually head to a local pub on a Saturday evening, “escaping into the car park at the back if we caught sight of a beak [teacher] coming in to ‘bust’ us”.
Sundays, meanwhile, allegedly saw students drink home brew in house bars, in addition to the allotted two glasses of beer or wine (for sixth form students only). “In reality, two turned into several glasses of disgusting red wine or beer, which often led to our loos being redecorated in a fetching shade of scarlet,” she confessed.
Much has changed for Marlborough since then, however, and it is now one of the country’s leading schools, with a progressive female Master, Louise Moelwyn-Hughes, at its head.
Prince William’s future wife Kate joined the prestigious co-ed boarding school in 1996, having moved after enduring bullying at her previous school, Downe House. Kate is believed to have felt at home from the start of her time at Marlborough, where she joined the school’s cosy all-girls boarding house, Elmhurst.
Contemporaries recalled her as the perfect pupil to the Daily Mail, remembering her as listening to her Walkman, watching Friends and indulging in Marmite sandwiches.
She also made a very close group of friends – but there was one thing that set her apart. According to the publication, Kate remained a responsible role model and was never caught with illicit alcohol – unlike her friends, one of whom once confided: “A group of us used to sneak off to Reading to go drinking but she would never join us.”
Another pal, Gemma, revealed that it was when 16-year-old Kate returned to the school for sixth form after the holidays, she had transformed into “an absolute beauty”.
But despite the fact she turned heads, the future royal didn’t have many romantic entanglements. Her first kiss was reportedly with a boy named Woody, who was the older brother of Alice St John Webster, one of Kate’s closest friends.
She is also said to have had a brief romance with Harry Blakelock, captain of the rugby team, which fizzled out after he left school, reportedly leaving Kate ‘heartbroken’.
By the time Kate was ready to leave Marlborough College, she had made a big impact and was voted ‘Person most likely to be loved by everybody’ in her yearbook.
Kate gained 11 GCSEs at the College before going on to achieve As in Maths and Art and a B in English for her A-levels. Just like William, she took a gap year before going to university – and actually did a surprisingly similar trip, undertaking a Raleigh International programme in Chile.
Then in 2001, she headed to St Andrews University in Scotland to study History of Art – and met her future husband, who was enrolled on the same course.
Kate is not Marlborough’s only famous alma mater. Other notable former pupils include Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman, wartime poet Siegfried Sassoon, writer Dick King-Smith, singer Chris de Burgh and comedian Jack Whitehall.
Kate’s younger sister Pippa Middleton and Princess Eugenie are also Old Marlburians, as is Olivia Grosvenor, the Duchess of Westminster.
