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From A* grades to Star Wars Reaching for the stars in Hertfordshire’s Tring Park School
Bishop’s Stortford and Tring are about as far from each other as it is possible to be in the county of Hertfordshire and they can each boast a remarkable ‘favourite son’. Cecil Rhodes was born the son of a clergyman in Bishop’s Stortford and suffered delicate health as child. He was therefore sent to live with his brother in Natal and in the short course of the rest of his life he left an indelible impression on South Africa. He also left a large endowment to his old university, Oxford, to found and maintain the Rhodes Scholarship programme. This has amply fulfilled his intention to cement bonds between the UK, the Commonwealth and the United States, bringing young men who became Prime Ministers of Pakistan, Canada and Australia to the university, as well as US President Bill Clinton. Rhodes was a determined and often impulsive man who said: ‘If you have an idea, and it is a good idea, if you only stick to it you will come out all right’. The big idea in the life of Walter Rothschild, Tring’s most remarkable resident, was to run a zoological museum and, despite being only seven when he had it, it lasted him the rest of his life and produced a collection that forms a large part of the Natural History Museum in London. He built a private museum in the grounds of his family mansion, where a huge collection of mammals, birds, reptiles and insects can still be found managed by the Natural History Museum at Tring. The mansion itself now houses a remarkable educational institution, Tring Park School for the Performing Arts, where today some highly talented young people, inspired by their ‘good idea’, are following the ‘reach for the stars’ examples of Walter Rothschild and Cecil Rhodes.
Tring Park has been one of the UK’s leading schools for young people with a talent for performing arts for almost 100 years. It traces its roots back to the two schools founded by Grace Cone in 1919 and Olive Ripman in 1922, which became first the Cone Ripman School and then the Arts Educational Schools. Famous students such as Margaret Lockwood, Julie Andrews and Darcy Bussell personify the remarkably wide range of training and professional development on offer. After cutting its ties with Arts Ed, the school relocated to the country, set up home in the extraordinary former Rothschild mansion, and renamed itself Tring Park. The school moved with the times, adding commercial music to its performance courses, and opening its own theatre, as well as building a hugely impressive dance studio wing. It has certainly always been one of the go-to schools for parents whose offspring have aspirations to dance and to act. Many visit the school’s Markova Theatre to see the stars of the future in action, as the school regularly provides its students with performing opportunities while they are training. In February 2016 the musical theatre production will be Cabaret, and the show is sure to run to packed houses and showcase some incredible young talent. But the school is fast becoming a favourite for other reasons. One of the chief reasons why property prices are so high in Hertfordshire is the fact that many London parents with children approaching school age move to be closer to the academic centres of excellence in places such as St Albans, Harpenden and Berkhamsted. Residents of the county are spoilt for choice, with many excellent state schools achieving academic results to rival the
Spring 2016
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