Establishment The school was founded by Dr. E. Fenwick and opened on 22 January 1901, admitting 54 boys. The original Victorian school buildings occupied a plot in Portchester Road. Adjacent to the main school was the purpose-built boarding house (pictured), in which the headmaster and a select number of boarders lived (at an annual fee of 12 guineas). As the number of students increased (200 in 1904, 306 in 1914, 479 in 1925), so too did the accommodation; the school encompassed a former
Royal Victoria Hospital in 1925 for lower school classes, which was situated in the nearby Lowther Road. The two sites were known within the school as "Portchester" and "Lowther". Among the Taunton staff was English master Horace King, later
Lord Maybray-King,
Speaker of the House of Commons. On 2 June 1940, about 800 French soldiers evacuated from
Dunkirk were temporarily billeted in the school. Additional gas cookers were installed in the kitchen (now Languages Office) and staff were involved in preparing food and drink for the soldiers who occupied corridors and form rooms. One form room was used a temporary hospital for the more seriously wounded. Two days later, a further 300 arrived and remained in the school for about a week. On 19 June, after the French had been moved elsewhere, 400 or so British soldiers arrived, having been rescued from Cherbourg by the Royal Navy. It was agreed they would occupy the ground floor, leaving the senior school to carry out their summer examinations in the rooms above. Normal education resumed on 26 June. In 1935, planning for new school buildings on the northern fringe of Charminster began. Various proposals were considered and the Council decided to allocate 10 acres for the new school in East Way. Building operations were begun early in 1937 and the Foundation Stones were laid on 25 May. They were erected from the designs and under the supervision of W. L. Clowes, Borough Engineer and Architect from 1936 onwards. They opened in 1939 and were first occupied by the boys from Portchester and Lowther and evacuees from Taunton's School in Southampton. Soon after, HORSA huts were erected to the north of the main buildings to house more classrooms. Further extensions to the buildings were made in subsequent years, with the canteen (previously above the Old Gym) built in 1957, a new physics laboratory built in 1958, Rooms 40 and 41 (now 9 and 10) in 1959, a new chemistry laboratory in 1961, a steel-framed structure above the single-storey north-eastern section (at the time of building, notorious for rocking in the wind) in the early 1990s and office space for Housemasters and admin staff later in 1992 (at the time the present House system was introduced). Larger scale building works include the Sixth Form Block in 1968, the Art & Technology blocks in the 1990s (replacing the HORSA huts), the Maths Blocks, which at the time of construction (between 2005 and 2007) was used for
religious studies and
mathematics but now the eight classrooms are exclusively purposed for the latter and the Sir David English Centre in 1999 (replacing the increasingly neglected, vandalised and subsequently demolished pavilions that were used for physical education and sports events).
Modern history, 1973– In 1973, the school hall burnt down. planned to accommodate the increasing number of pupils. It was completed in January 2023, with the headmaster opening it alongside former pupil
Alex James. The three-storey building contains six new language classrooms alongside a new Modern Foreign Languages office, a canteen entitled
Le Bistro, and a new sixth-form study centre. In 2026, the school appointed their first female headteacher. ==Head teachers==