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Woldingham School

school in Surrey, UK

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ1624742 ↗
Source-derived summary

Woldingham School is an independent boarding and day school for girls, located in the former Marden Park of 700 acres (280 ha) outside the village of Woldingham, Surrey, in South East England.

It is a Roman Catholic school and a member of the global Network of Sacred Heart Schools.

History

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 the Second World War, the school was evacuated, first to Newquay and later to Stanford Hall, near Rugby. Because the house at the Roehampton site was badly damaged during a 1941 air raid and later had to be demolished, the school decided, at the end of the 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.

Editorial summary

“Woldingham School” enters the record as school in Surrey, UK. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Woldingham, School and school can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1842, 1800, 1925, 1789—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1842, 1938-01-01—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Woldingham, School and school.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Woldingham School” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Woldingham, School and school provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1624742. Authority coordinates are 51.276, -0.052. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1842, 1800, 1925 and 1789.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Woldingham School”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Woldingham School primary sources, Woldingham School archive and Woldingham research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Woldingham School”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Woldingham School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.