A Unique & Alas Now Defunct Scholastic Establishment of Great Individuality
For more information, St John's College took up residence at Coolhurst in 1957.
St John's was an independent school founded in 1830 in Brighton, East Sussex, but subsequently relocated to the mansion of Coolhurst (formerly the home of the Scrase Dickens family) on the rural outskirts of Horsham, which during its time as a school stood in 75 acres of grounds surrounded by St Leonard's Forest, on a site 300 feet above sea level. Together with its one-time pre-prep/junior school
Heron's Ghyll, St John's served up to 200 pupils, both boarders and day boys, aged from 8 years upwards, with classes kept relatively small so that pupils could be provided with better individual attention. Mainly for sports-fixture purposes, the pupils were divided into four symbolic Houses - Saint Patrick's, Saint Andrew's, Saint David's and St George's. School uniform varied over the years, but at one stage incorporated a plain pale-grey herringbone tweed jacket, making the boys cut a notably different figure in Horsham when compared with pupils from traditional blazer-wearing schools and helping to reinforce St John's image as Horsham's 'alternative' school. School prefects wore black academic gowns over their jackets. Whilst cricket, tennis, football, track athletics and gym-based PE figured strongly, ex-pupils' most vivid sporting memories are of regular cross-country runs through adjacent areas of the beautiful St Leonard's Forest. To quote from the prospectus, the school aimed 'to develop sound moral character and to produce happy, healthy and useful citizens who know how to work and to play and also how to live. It is the desire of the School to inculcate a spirit of service and a sense of responsibility.' Elsewhere, the prospectus stated that the school catered 'for the "average" boy who represents the majority at any school and who should be the first person to be considered. Boys showing particular aptitude and ability may, if parents wish, be entered for scholarships.'
The school was notable in its later decades as the only educational establishment in the Horsham area which served a pupil-population consisting of a mixture of both local boys and boys from overseas. Overseas pupils were sometimes known to board at the school during both the term-time and part of the holidays, by agreement between the school and the boys' parents. The Latin motto underneath the school badge reads SPES SIBI QUISQUE, which roughly translates as 'We find our hope in one another' (or alternatively 'Let each man's hope be in himself' if the word sibi is treated as being in the singular - but the former translation is more likely to be the one intended by the school's founders). A rallying point for former pupils exists on Facebook under the name Saintjohnscollege Coolhurst, with effect from 30 May 2011. The creation of this page and of the separate Facebook listing (Saintjohnscollege Coolhurst) was inspired by the highly entertaining reminiscences of erstwhile scholars on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/horsham/1379274167/
COOLHURST HOUSE
The Coolhurst estate is first mentioned in records in 1402 and a house was definitely in existence by 1642, when it was in the hands of Sir William Ford and John Caryll. Part of the brick-and-stone fabric of this house still survives at the rear of the (lower-roofed) service range of the mansion, though the earlier house would probably have been in large part a timber-framed farmhouse. A family named Linfield owned lands at Coolhurst from the late 17th century onwards. John Linfield made a comfortable living as an attorney, his practice being based in a house on The Causeway in Horsham. The Linfields would probably have enlarged the original farmhouse into something more befitting minor gentry. In 1807, Charles Linfield sold Coolhurst to the Earl of Galloway. The house is believed to have been doubled in size at around this time. In 1834/35, it was extensively remodelled and rebuilt by the architect P.F. Robinson in the Neo-Elizabethan style, resulting in the majority of today's mansion. The grandest part of the house represents the new structure built at this time, whilst the earlier, lower-roofed house became the service wing and servants' quarters. This major work was carried out at the expense of the Dowager Marchioness of Northampton. It was her daughter, Lady Frances Elizabeth Compton, who married into the Scrase-Dickins family, into whose ownership Coolhurst therefore passed. Further significant alterations were made to the building c.1860. By the 1950s it had ceased to be a family home and had become first a country club and then a school for girls.