The founding committee of 16 men pledges over £800 (equivalent in today’s money to £47,303) for the founding of the school, Surrey County School, later re-named Cranleigh School. The school is ‘for the sons of farmers and others engaged in commercial pursuits’. The document is a draft of the original letter about the school written in 1864.

George Cubitt MP donates an eight-acre site just outside Cranleigh to the school. The founding committee raises £3,500 (£206,952) for the school by the summer. 200,000 bricks are ordered for the building of the school.

At the school’s opening HM Joseph Merriman says: ‘This is a public school in the very widest sense. It had a public origin. It has been brought to its present state by public appeals’.

The Chapel is built with a donation by Sir Henry Peek (in memory of his mother, Elizabeth) at a cost of £5,500 (£344,349). The Chapel benefits from gifts, often of stained-glass windows, which are donated between 1869-91.

Sir Cuthbert Peek donates a clock for clock tower at a cost of £82 (£6,134).

The Sanatorium is gifted by George Cubitt MP.

DD Heath, a ‘considerable benfactor of the school’, funds new and fully-equipped science laboratory.

A school on the coast run by Sir Henry Peek’s brother closes and the endowment of £2,000 (£156,344) is switched to Cranleigh.

John Williams (1&4 South 1876) donates new oak seating for the Chapel, replacing the original deal seats.

The Merriman Block – originally called the New Block – is opened with the help of funds from Old Cranleighans (OCs).

The Chemistry and Physics laboratories at the top of the golf course are opened, a gift from Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey; the North Field, leased since 1896, is presented to the school by Henry Cubitt.

The Prep School, known as New House, opens 1913.

14 acres are presented to the School by OCs to commemorate the school’s Golden Jubilee.

A war memorial fund is set up to erect cenotaph in front of the school.

The cricket pavilion, a memorial to OCs who died in the war, is funded by OCs and opened on Jubilee.

The Pageant, involving hundreds of boys as well as girls from St Catherine’s, raises £200 (£8,211) towards the £2,000 (£82,117) cost of a new organ for the Chapel.

Governors launch a scholarship scheme costing £290 (£13,278) per year, the top scholarship being worth just under half the fees.

OC John Wheeler Williams funds the re-modelling of classrooms on either side of the main entrance to create the Library and Reading Room.

The Connaught block, Devonport Speech Hall and Headmaster’s House are opened. Lord Devonport pays all the costs of the Speech Hall.

Earl of Midleton funds new entrance gates to replace the rather agricultural ones then in position.

Two squash courts are built with funding coming from the Common Room and OCs.

Cranleigh funds 18 scholarships to a total value of £1,000 (£39,346).

Pilot Officer JG Pope, a master who was killed in the war, leaves a bequest of £1,000 (£35,551) and all his scientific biological books, papers, microscopic slides and instruments to the school. The widow of George Antrobus, a former master, bequeaths a house to Cranleigh and money to New College Oxford to set up a the Cranleigh Scholarship. Colonel Armstrong gives ‘a most generous sum of money’ to endow prizes for classics in memory of his son Richard, who was killed in the war. The extract from Cranleighan Magazine reports these legacies.

Fruit trees are donated by OCs and parents to develop an orchard on the lower slope in front of the Prep School as a way to supplement the pupils’ diet with fruit during post-war rationing.

New gymnasium, kitchen and library are built for the Prep School and paid for by OCs and other friends of Cranleigh as a war memorial.

Cranleigh receives a £6,000 (£143,192) grant from the Industrial Fund for the Advancement of Scientific Education towards the cost of an extension to the science laboratories.

The new swimming bath and changing rooms open as a memorial to OCs killed in the war as a first stage in the building programme connected with the Centenary Appeal. By 1959, the appeal has raised £60,000 (£1,257,660).

‘Ancient OC’, Revd Joseph Fenner Spink, gives £2,500 (£52,403) towards the tuck shop conversion.

The six-classroom Rhodes Block opens as part of the ongoing Centenary Appeal.

The new Prep School Chapel is built with a donation of £12,500 (£262,012) from Revd Joseph Fenner Spink.

Announcement that Centenary Appeal target of £200,000 (£3,804,110) has almost been reached.

The Centenary Appeal receives the final instalment of a legacy left by the Rev Joseph Fenner Spink. The total amount of the legacy was £5,845 (£82,319). Spink has been one of the most generous benefactors in the history of the school. His total gifts to the school amounted to £25,841 (£363,934).

A full-fees scholarship is offered for the first time and other awards were up-graded and linked to fee levels.

A legacy of £30,000 (£228,927) enables the purchase of a new organ for the Chapel, a re-organisation of the seating and a removal of screens and organ pipes from the ambulatory.

JR Pickup (1 North 1897-1902) leaves £37,000 (£144,467) to the school. This is used to construct a new redgra (now an astroturf) which is named after him.

The widow of an OC leaves the residue of her estate, around £42,000 (£163,989), to the school for the ‘education and maintenance at Cranleigh School of a worthy and poor boy’.

Bishop David Loveday (Headmaster, 1931-54) leaves a bequest to Cranleigh which is used to provide new mobile efficient seating for the Speech Hall.

An OC widow leaves a bequest of £30,000 (£82,611) to the school which is used to make a series of improvements to the Music School.

An OC leaves a generous legacy of around £500,000 (£1,376,850) in memory of his father (also an OC).

Vivian Cox Theatre is opened by Sir John Mills. It was built following donations of the 1990 Appeal and the generosity of OC Vivian Cox ((1 & 4 South, 1925-34).

An OC leaves a fifth of his estate to the school (and a fifth to the OC Society). Each share is worth around £150,000 (£310,305).

Eric Abbott (1 North 1917-1921) leaves £200,000 (£306,880) to endow the Eric Abbott Awards ‘for pupils who can contribute significantly to the life of the school’.

The Trevor Abbott Sports Centre opens, funded in part by OCs, replacing the gym which has been used since 1897.

An anonymous donor funds the Academic Lecture Theatre in the new Emms Centre.

A £500,000 renovation of the Jubilee Pavilion takes place, part-funded by OCs with a donation of £300,000.

OC Vivian Cox (1 & 4 South, 1925-34) bequeaths £655,000 (£856,489) to the school. The school’s legacy society is named in his memory.

The Old Cranleighan Society gives £300,000 to Cranleigh Foundation.

An OC bequeaths £86,885 to Cranleigh School.

This is part of a £2 million-refurbishment of the Chapel, part-funded by OCs and parents.

OCs club together to raise money to create a pitch – Bluett’s – in memory of OC David Bluett (2 North, 1951-55).

Cranleigh enters a partnership with the charity in a commitment to support Kawama Community School (a primary school in Zambia). £175,000 is raised in first five years.

The school receives a £3,000 legacy from an OC bequeathed to help fund the Chapel restoration.

Copse of 100 trees is donated by families is planted to mark centenary of the Prep School.

The oak pews, installed in 1902, are sold off to parents to make way for mobile seating and raises over £20,000.

‘Leaving’ War Memorial designed by leading sculptor, OC Nicholas Dimbleby (2 North, 1960-64), is funded, in part by donations from OCs. It is unveiled to mark centenary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme and the end of the School’s 150th year.

Our first Foundationer completed her education at Cranleigh. Her place had been funded in its entirety by an anonymous donor.

Physics Master, Geoffrey Donald (1968-96) leaves a bequest which complete the installation of Chapel glass doors.

A widow of an Old Cranleighan leaves a bequest in memory of her husband.

Major donors, Anthony and Carolyn Townsend, open the Townsend Building at Cranleigh Prep. Mr Townsend was a long-serving Chairman of the Governors. The building houses state-of the-art facilities for design, art, sciences and food technology.

OC and chairman of the Trustees of the Foundation, Nick Meyer, takes on the challenge of walking 300 miles of the Cornish coast over the summer of 2019 in aid of the Cranleigh Foundation. He raises over £25,000.

John Oram (East, 1936-40) leaves a legacy of £242,048 to the Cranleigh Foundation in his will.

A family acknowledges their child’s education at Cranleigh with a generous gift of £50,000.

The kindness and generosity of parents in supporting the Cranleigh Foundation has enabled the fund to reach £4.8m.  The target remains to reach £10m which will fund 10 Foundationers in perpetuity.  Thank you to the parent community for helping to give