Wycombe Abbey
school in Buckinghamshire, UK
Wycombe Abbey ( WIK-əm) is a private girls' boarding and day school in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England.
The school was founded in 1896 by Dame Frances Dove (1847–1942), who was previously headmistress of St Leonards School in Scotland. Its present capacity is approximately 650 girls, aged 11 to 18. The current headmistress is Jo Duncan.
The school is on a 69-hectare campus in central High Wycombe. The land includes woods, gardens, a Cold War bunker (RAF Daws Hill) and a lake, and rises up to 150 metres above sea level in the Chiltern Hills. The freehold is owned by the school; the main house and several buildings at Wycombe Abbey are Grade II* listed.
Wycombe Abbey is included in The Schools Index of the world's best 125 private schools and among the top 30 senior schools in the UK.
In the 2023/2024 GCSE examinations, the school achieved 97% 9-7. For the A-level examinations, the school achieved 95% A*-B.
History
Early history
In the 13th century, the area, with the parish church, was part of the holding of the Abbess of Godstow. 600 years later, the priory at Godstowe was also re-founded as a school by Dame Frances Dove, and today is a "feeder" preparatory school for Wycombe Abbey.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wycombe Abbey” 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.