The school was founded in 1869 at Wixenford House, Eversley, Hampshire, by its first head master, Richard Cowley Powles (1819–1901), a Church of England cleric, and has been described as "successful and fashionable".

[3] Powles, who in his youth had been a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, had previously operated a school at Blackheath, and he came to Eversley to be near his lifelong friend Charles Kingsley.

[4] One of his boys at Wixenford, Albert Baillie, writing in the 1950s, recalled Powles as "a genuine educator and a remarkable man" and noted that he had worn his hair "neatly brushed up into two horns above his ears".

[17] In 1910, Morton was joined by two joint headmasters, who were business partners, Harold Wallis and Ernest Garnett, forming a triumvirate.

With its demise, its former buildings presented an opportunity for another fashionable prep school, Ludgrove, until then based at Cockfosters, which moved onto the site in 1937.