The original school on the site in the north of the village of Bloxham was founded in 1853 by John William Hewett (1824–1886), a local Anglo-Catholic curate.

[4] Street's design was described by The Gentleman's Magazine as the 'most beautiful modern Gothic buildings ever devoted in England to a scholastic purpose'.

By mid-1856, Hewett was bankrupt and the school had failed to attract sufficient numbers of boys, who were expected to pay unusually high fees.

[3] In 1859, Hewett's dilapidated school buildings were bought for £1,615 by Philip Reginald Egerton, a Church of England curate working in Deddington.

[5] Like Hewett, he was strongly influenced by the Oxford Movement and sought to establish a new school to teach its values.

He sought the backing of several notable academics and clergymen, including Wilberforce, Woodard and Henry Liddon.

Under the personal leadership of Egerton, Bloxham initially provided education for middle-class boys in the public school tradition, although classics was originally not widely taught.

[5] Despite Egerton's plans for the school to provide for local farmers and tradesmen, a report in 1870 found that most of the boys were from professional, ecclesiastical and military families.

The Education Act 1902 worsened the situation, as did a growing prejudice against high church practices in schools.

[8] The school's impressive academic record and high Oxbridge entrant rates in the 1900s helped it to survive.

By the 1910s, a prefect system, house rivalries, corporal punishment and fagging confirmed Bloxham's identity as a conforming public school, although the latter two practices were abolished in the 1970s.

Like many public schools, Bloxham suffered disproportionately high casualties during the First World War, in which over 400 current and former pupils served and 79 were killed.

Girls started to be admitted into the sixth form in small numbers in the early 1970s and the school became fully co-educational in 1998.

New squash courts have also been built next to the Dewey Sports Centre, and the art school has been increased in size.

The extension to the 1901 music school was completed in the summer of 2007, and officially opened by Aled Jones in November 2008.

[4] At its west end is a balcony and organ loft, with an octagonal turret containing the bell tower rising above Main School.

At the east end of the chapel is a large Te Deum window made by Clayton and Bell in memory of Wilberforce.

Woollen Hale, the house of Bloxham headmasters since 1986, is located on the top of Hobb Hill, overlooking playing fields and the Main School.

[24] The project is currently run from Ripon College Cuddesdon near Oxford, where several of Bloxham's headmasters have been educated.

Sport plays a significant role in Bloxham life, with afternoons on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays being allocated to games' practices and matches for pupils in years 9–13.

Pupils can take part in other activities, such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award, drama, community service, dance, adventure training, horse riding and management and horticulture.

[26] Bloxham is one of the few schools in the country to have been granted its own cap badge and former members have served with distinction in the British armed forces.

The school has a music department which offers professional tuition in brass, guitar, keyboard, organ, percussion, singing, strings and woodwind.

A quotation from the Book of Proverbs, it is Justorum Semita Lux Splendens (Latin), which translates as "The path of the just is a shining light".

Bloxham suffered a high casualty rate during World War I, in which 79 current and former pupils were killed.