[2] The school opened in 1789 with fifteen pupils in Somers Town, St Pancras, Middlesex.

The property has since disappeared but was between the present day Euston and St Pancras stations, near where the British Library is today.

They had to be the daughters of Freemasons and were required to be in good health, having already had smallpox or cowpox and "be free from infirmity of deformity."

The original location of the house in Somers town became too small with the addition of five new pupils at the end of the first year and another five after that.

The place for the new school was St George's Fields, that is today 28 Westminster Bridge Road.

In June 1926, the school moved to a site in Rickmansworth comprising in 204 acres (0.83 km2) of land with a mansion (although reports suggest this was in a state of disrepair.)

John Leopold Denman, an architect from Brighton, won the commission to design the school.

In order to protect the girls from the expected aerial bombardment, an air raid shelter had been dug out.

The shelter was commonly referred to as the trenches and consisted of tunnels that zig-zagged with a room at intervals for boiling a kettle or dispensing medicines.

The tunnels were lined with benches 13 inches (330 mm) wide and each girl was allocated a place she must find in a raid.

The captain visited the school, and he and his ship also took part in the action on D-Day, carrying men and munitions.

On the new badge is the school motto, Circumornatae ut similitudo templi, which is the Vulgate version of a phrase from Psalm 144:12: "That our daughters may be as the polished corners of the temple".

The school follows the UK national curriculum with students taking their GCSEs at age 16 and A-Levels at 18.