- Quantock Lodge
.The first three pupils came from Cotham High School and they were Richard Williams,Laurie Booth and Tony Budget.
Laurie wrote this about his first day at the school.
I was set down from my father's car at the age of fourteen; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life at Quantock began.The summer grass, amongst which I stood, was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never been so close to grass before and so alone. The School towered above me and all around me, each turret tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight. It was knife-edged, dark, and a wicked green, I was lost and didn't know where to move. Never to be forgotten, that first long day of a Quantock summer.Never to be forgotten, or ever tasted again . …..
Peaster ran both schools with Cotham High School closing in 1966, and Quantock had a boys-only intake, mainly composed of the sons of diplomats and armed services personnel. The 1960s and early 1970s saw a high point for the school, with it being described as 'The Gordonstoun of the West'.
In 1986 Quantock School went co-educational, but soon after the turn of the 1990s was in gradual decline, due in the main to the end of the Cold War and the closing of a number of overseas service bases, which in turn led to a drying up of new pupils. The return of the colony of Hong Kong to China in 1997 also had a serious impact on the school population. In 1998, Quantock School closed.
Following the death of David Peaster in 2000, the school reverted back to its former name of
Quantock Lodge , and was remarketed by Peaster's widow Jane as a centre for recreation and banqueting. It is also a recognised youth summer camp centre.Gallery
External links
*http://quantocklodge.tripod.com/
*http://travel.guardian.co.uk/activities/family/story/0,,1749384,00.html
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