The Royal Alexandra and Albert School

The Royal Alexandra and Albert School is an all-through co-educational boarding school located in Reigate, Surrey. The headmaster was Mark Dixon. The Royal Alexandra and Albert School Act, of 1949, united The Royal Alexandra School, which was founded in 1758, and The Royal Albert orphan School, which was founded in 1864 as a national memorial to Prince Albert, late husband of Queen Victoria. It is one of 36 state-maintained boarding schools in England and Wales, and one of the few state schools in the United Kingdom to educate children from primary school years to sixth form.History of The Royal Alexandra and Albert SchoolThe earliest link in the school's history goes back to the Orphan Working School which was founded in 1758 by fourteen men meeting in an Inn led by Edward Pickard, a dissenting minister. The school expanded under the secretaryship of Joseph Soul in Hampstead. It continued to expand and it opened a linked convalescent home in Margate.The other part of the school was known as the Royal Albert Orphan Asylum. It was situated in Camberley, just outside Bagshot's boundary, and was opened in 1864. The second school was intended for children between the age of five and eight and was founded by the Orphan Working School with Joseph Soul as the first honorary secretary. In 1867 Queen Victoria planted a Wellingtonia Gigantica tree during an "Inauguration Ceremony" for the school. A stone at the site was engraved VIR 1867 and is mistakenly thought by some to be the foundation stone of the building. The Wellingtonia survives to this day. A later patron of the school was Victoria's son Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn.