Charterhouse School
English collegiate independent boarding school
Charterhouse is a public school (English private boarding and day school) for pupils aged 13–18, located in the market town of Godalming, in Surrey, England. Founded by Thomas Sutton in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian monastery in Charterhouse Square, Smithfield, London, it educates over 1000 pupils. Charterhouse is one of the original nine English public schools reported upon by the Clarendon Commission in 1864 leading to its regulation by the Public Schools Act 1868.
Charterhouse charges full boarders around £48,038.40 (with the exclusion of VAT) per annum (2025/2026), alongside charging day pupils around £37,418.40 (with the exclusion of VAT) per annum (2025/2026). It educated the British Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and has numerous notable alumni.
History
In May 1611, the London Charterhouse came into the hands of Thomas Sutton (1532–1611) of Knaith, Lincolnshire. He acquired a fortune by the discovery of coal on two estates which he had leased near Newcastle upon Tyne, and afterwards, moving to London, he carried on a commercial career. In 1611, the year of his death, he endowed a hospital on the site of the Charterhouse, calling it the hospital of King James, and in his will he bequeathed moneys to maintain a chapel, hospital (almshouse) and school. He died on 12 December, and subsequently the will was hotly contested but upheld in court, and the foundation was finally constituted to afford a home for eighty male pensioners (gentlemen by descent and in poverty, soldiers that have borne arms by sea or land, merchants decayed by piracy or shipwreck, or servants in household to the King or Queen), and to educate forty boys.
Charterhouse established a reputation for excellence in hospital care and treatment, thanks in part to Henry Levett, an Oxford graduate who joined the school as a physician in 1712.
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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 Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1067870. VIAF identifies the subject as 152910183. The Library of Congress control number is nr2006003591. Authority coordinates are 51.197, -0.622. 2 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1611, 1000, 1864 and 1868.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charterhouse 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.