[1][2] The school became a notable educational centre for Puritan families in the 17th century, numbering a hundred or more pupils, under Martin Holbeach, Headmaster from 1627 to 1649, and his successors (see below).

Thomas Surridge (headmaster 1835–1850) discovered from research among the records, that a larger income was really due to the foundation, a re-organisation took place by Act of Parliament, and in 1850, under the headmastership of the Rev.

Albert Henry Wratislaw, the school was put under a new governing body (a revised scheme coming into operation in 1876).

Thereafter, Felsted rapidly developed into one of the regular public schools of the modern English type, under the Rev.

The school was evacuated to three Herefordshire houses near Ross-on-Wye during the Second World War at the owners invitation to be out of the way of German bombing.

Their van was stopped by a police patrol and Cathal Goulding, Sean Stephenson, later known as Seán Mac Stíofáin and Manus Canning each received 8 years in prison.

The success of taking drama productions every two years to perform in American high schools from 2000 onwards, led to the school being invited in 2008 by the U.S. authorities to put on a production of Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women.

The success of this venture led to three further productions in the Correctional Facility: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (2010), The Secret Garden (2012) and Cabaret (2014).