Ravenscroft was founded by Mr Henry F. Bailey as a preparatory school for boys at Yelverton, Devon, in 1931.

[3] In 1941, during the Second World War, a new but temporary Royal Air Force airfield called RAF Harrowbeer was constructed on part of Roborough Down close to Yelverton, and Ravenscroft House was requisitioned to become the officers' mess.

By May of that year they had announced that they had opened a Kindergarten, as well as preparing older boys for the Common Entrance Examination.

An old boy, Olympic rower Hugh Wardell-Yerburgh, visited the school in 1968, and Edward Henderson, Bishop of Bath and Wells, spoke warmly of it as guest speaker at its prize day in June of that year.

As a special school, 'O' Level courses (later GCSE) were introduced, and children stayed at Ravenscroft until the age of sixteen or seventeen.

In July 1996, Ravenscroft School was closed, and most of its pupils and staff transferred to a new educational institution on the same site called Farleigh College.