I attended Kate’s £59k-a-year top pick school for George – it was wild with supermodels, drugs & boys howling at girls
IT IS one of the most prestigious schools in the world - and one that is rumoured to be welcoming Prince George next September.
Marlborough College, the £59,000-a-year co-educational boarding school in Wiltshire, is reportedly Kate Middleton’s top choice - and as a former pupil I understand why.
The glossy prospectus shows Hogwarts-esque buildings, rolling green playing fields and incredibly well-groomed children quietly playing chess.
But in my reality, life there was a far more wild affair.
Unruly boys would make dog noises at the girls as they walked into assembly, and rate them of out 10.
Despite this, we'd spend our weekends 'oating' (that was our code word for snogging) and drinking in the local pubs while trying to avoid getting 'gated' (the school equivalent of being grounded).
Supermodels bursting in on me in the bath so they could enjoy a cheeky smoke out of the window also happened during my time there.
Our year, 1988, was the final one before Marlborough went completely co-ed.
But the school has always been a trend-setter – accepting girls in the sixth form in 1968 long before most other boys’ public schools did the same.
A cousin who was there at the time recalled that the arriving girls were treated like goddesses. I can’t say that held true for us.
Perhaps because of the change that was about to be forced on them, the boys were less welcoming than they could have been.
Girls marked out of 10
We were mixed up into the boys’ houses – 10 girls in each house of 60 or so boys, but had our own (secure) sleeping quarters.
Now, there are girls’ and boys’ houses, and you’re either close to the school (what we called an “in” house, like B1 or C2), or in a house further out along the road leading out of Marlborough – an “out” house, like Cotton or Preshute.
My diary relates that the boys in my house howled at us when we first walked into our house assembly (i.e. they thought we were “dogs”).
While it wasn’t true that we all had to go on the Pill before going there – a public school myth – it was definitely the case that marks out of 10 were given to the girls eating in the dreaded Norwood Hall dining room.
This 1960s addition to the “Court” at Marlborough – the collection of historic houses, library, chapel and classrooms surrounding a central patch of grass that we weren’t allowed to walk on – was a really terrifying place in the '80s.
If you had snogged someone (or worse), the Hall would erupt to the sound of 800 trays being bashed on the tables.
We had to dodge missiles – soggy wet currant buns or baked potatoes full of baked beans.
It wasn’t easy on the boys who didn’t fit in, either.
The tables they sat on were subject to a rigid social hierarchy (boys would get up if the girls tried to sit with them, so we all sat together) – the “lads” – the gods of the school – the “whos” – so-called because no one knew “who” they were – and then the people in between, like the Red Hand Gang, which included late Jamiroquai keyboard player Toby Grafftey-Smith.
The school has its own complicated vocabulary too – teachers are beaks, and the head is the Master, or Maga.
A weekend away is an exeat and if you are badly behaved, it’s rustication for you, not suspension.
The punishment system back then was either “hard” or “soft” gating – and a pink chit meant you had to get up early to go for a run. No longer a thing, apparently.
You’d get gated for being caught in one of the town’s many pubs on a Saturday night.
Although some of our favourite haunts like The Crown are now sophisticated restaurants, the best spit and sawdust boozer, the Lamb, is still there.
I bet it’s pretty hard for the pupils to drink in there now, but we used to pack it out on a Saturday, escaping into the car park at the back if we caught sight of a beak coming in to “bust” us.
Possible schools Prince George is considering attending
- Oundle School, Northamptonshire - £35,154 per year
- Eton College, Berkshire - £52,749 per year
- Marlborough College, Wiltshire - £48,000 per year
- St Edward’s School, Oxford - £57,262 per year
- University College School, Hampstead - £31,371 per year
- Highgate School, North London - £26,490 per year
Time for a quick tab (a cigarette) until the coast was clear.
On Sundays, we’d drink home brew in house bars, notching up a remarkable number of KitKats on our bar tabs in addition to our allotted two glasses of beer or wine (for sixth form students only).
In reality, two turned into several glasses of disgusting red wine or beer, which often led to our loos being redecorated in a fetching shade of scarlet.
Talking of cigarettes, the best place to have a smoke if you were a girl was in the bathrooms.
There was no privacy – I’d be in the bath when late supermodel Stella Tennant would turn up for a smoke.
We’d put the fag ends in the Tampax incinerator, which once caught fire.
Sweet & Sour with Sam Cam
In the evening when we were locked in, the boys - who could get up to whatever they liked, to whatever time - would head to town to get us a Chinese takeaway and hand it up to the bathroom for us.
I remember eating Sweet and Sour chicken with Samantha Cameron - then Sheffield - on the night of the Great Storm in 1987.
Marlborough has something of a reputation for providing wives for the rich and powerful - as well as churning out other famous alumni like Jack Whitehall, Fred Again and Chris de Burgh.
Frances Osborne, ex-wife of our former Chancellor George went there, as did Sally Bercow, wife of the former Speaker of the House, John.
The most famous WAG remains the Princess of Wales.
Kate, having been miserable at all girls’ boarding school Downe House, was welcomed at Marlborough when she joined aged 14.
She settled in quickly, flourishing particularly in the sixth form, and making the kind of social contacts that would eventually lead her into Prince William’s arms at St Andrew’s.
While it was a wild place to be back then – Sam’s sister, journalist Emily, later got expelled for having cannabis in her dorm - Marlborough has put that past behind it and is now one of the country’s leading schools, with a progressive female Master, Louise Moelwyn-Hughes, at the helm.
It is one of the top choices for the upper middle classes – no longer the preserve of the children of vicars, which is what it was originally set up to be.
It attracts the offspring of alumni, West Londoners and people who live close by in Wiltshire and the Home Counties.
The extra-curricular activities are second to none (and always were), and the academic side is good too.
Some things remain the same, however: Merlin is still buried there, under an ancient mound right behind what was once our beloved art block (we were taught by the father of Charlie and Lola writer Lauren Childs), and the school still produces creative, bright, outgoing, questioning pupils who go on to have brilliant careers and do interesting things in life (well, I would say that, wouldn’t I!).
Prince George will have a ball if he goes there.