Southey Hall 

Southey Hall Boys Preparatory School, Bookham was very successful and highly respected with many pupils going on to Bradfield College, Charterhouse, Oxford and Cambridge but the school was not always at Bookham - it appears to have started life about 1885 in a building in Southey Road , Worthing . The records are few and far between, but it appears to have been established by three Wood sisters, Sarah, Mary and Anne aged 42, 39 and 37 all unmarried. Because Sarah was the oldest she was the Head of the school. It was a boarding school for boys.

By 1891 it was taught just by the three sisters, it had a matron Elizabeth Morgan and three domestic servants one of which was the cook. It had twenty four boarders aged between 7 and 12 who came from all parts of Southern England together with one boy, born in Ireland, another in South America and another from Australia. Although we have no record it presumably would have had, as well a number of day boys, perhaps another ten. By 1901 the school appears to have changed ownership into the hands of a Mr Newton Hinxman and his wife Edith with Newton as Head. They had two small girls aged 3 and 2. They had an Assistant Master Reginald Warrow, a 51 year old cook and three sixteen year old domestic servants - none of the staff were the staff of ten years before. At that time there were eighteen boarders aged 8 to 14 three of which were of Indian birth. By 1911 the school had enlarged and they had a Matron, a cook and 5 servants and 30 boarders aged 6 to 14. It is interesting that they had 14 boarders who had been born outside the UK from such places as India, Ceylon, Cyprus and East Indies all of which had quite normal English surnames. Presumably they were the children of families that had been working in these ‘colonies’.

We have no record of the school during WWI but by the time it was over, by 1921, the Headmaster was 60 and retired and the school was bought by the next owner, Henry Reginald Fussell (born in 1879). By this time the school was presumably limited by the size of the building and the number of boarders it could take manage and Henry looked for a far larger suitable property. Henry Fussell had a wife Mabel (born 1884) and three children, Denis Reginald (born 1907) and two daughters. The records show that the family came from the Wirral, Cheshire . The 1911 census shows Henry as a ‘School Master Assistant’.

In early 1924 Mr. and Mrs. Fussell purchased Eastwick Park and changed the name to Southey Hall Boys Preparatory School . The size of Eastwick Park  meant that the school could be built up to be a major ‘preparatory’ school. The original school in Worthing was sold and became the ‘Southey Hall Hotel’. In 1953 the building was converted to flats and was called ‘Southey Hall Flatlets’. It is still a block of flats but it is now known as ‘Dolphin Court ’

By the time of the beginning of WW2  Henry Fussell was about 60 and it was a good time for him to retire and hand over the headship to his son Denis Fussell in 1940. Denis was then 33 and single in which state he remained to his death in 1977, in Southampton, aged 70.  Henry did not have a long retirement as he died in 1941 aged only 63. At that time he was living in the New Forest area and his wife continued to live there until 1962 when she died, aged 78. In 1954 Mr. D. Fussell resigned and the position of Headmaster was taken up by the Deputy Headmaster, Mr. Lock, who had been with the school for many years.  However, the financial burden of running such a large establishment, in the changing times that were the 1950's,  proved to be such that the school was no longer a viable business proposition and, despite the best efforts of Mr. Lock and the goodwill of several of the parents,  the school had to close.  Mr. Locke amalgamated Southey Hall  with Little Abbey Prep School, Burghclere, Newbury and the building and it's grounds sat empty for several years before being taken over by the local council who were looking for a site for a new Primary School.. The B&W photographs below are a series of postcards that were donated by  'Southey Old Boy' Mr. N. Suffield-Jones who attended Southey Hall from 1948-1952.  An explanation of some of the photographs has been provided by another 'Southey Old Boy',  Mr. C. Butt  and thanks also  to 'Old Boys',   Mr. R. Reynolds and Mr. J. Good  for additional information.