Dover College, Dover

Dover College is a co-educational independent school in Dover. It was founded in 1871, and takes both day pupils and boarders. The school occupies some of the medieval buildings of Dover Priory, on a site just east of the eponymous railway station. In 1869 Robert Chignell, who had a private school at Westmount, in Folkestone Road, leased part of the Dover Priory buildings for a private school.

It is set in the grounds and ruins of the Priory of St.Martin, which was ransacked by King Henry VIII as part of his dissolution of the monasteries. The priory gives its name to Dover's main railway station which was built on the western part of the priory site. Some of the original medieval buildings remain.

The College was founded and opened modestly as a boys' school on 15 September 1871 and by the end of the first term there were already 21 boys in the school; by the end of the next summer another 32 had joined them. It acquired the large hall, or guest-house, in 1879 and converted it into a school chapel by enlarging the east end into an apse. In time, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners made over the whole property to the College Trustees.