There is no Harry Potter bell tower. No sweeping driveway through undulating fields. Indeed, no single iconic building (perhaps there are too many now) screams Bromsgrove School. £20 million has been spent on Bromsgrove School since the 1990’s, but still it keeps it secrets from a casual visitor. Amazingly, one can, drive through Bromsgrove and not even know a five hundred year old school on a one hundred acre site exists. Only one building, Housman Hall, stands outside the campus. And yet, like a vast walled garden, Bromsgrove School is beautiful and filled with unexpected treasures.

An ancient chantry school founded some time in the Middle Ages, Bromsgrove was re-established as a Tudor Grammar School between 1548 and 1553. The endowment of Sir Thomas Cookes in 1693 produced the first buildings on the present site and also the historic link with Worcester College, Oxford. At the foundation of the Headmasters' Conference in 1869 (Victorian Premier League for schools), Bromsgrove was one of the original 14 members. During the Second World War the School moved to Wales while the buildings were used by British Government Departments, but since its return, Bromsgrove has become one of Britain’s most successful and forward thinking independent schools. The opening of Bromsgrove International School Thailand in 2005 for over one thousand pupils testifies to Bromsgrove’s global vision. The School may have walls; its values and aspirations do not.