History of Weymouth College

The modern day Weymouth College used to be split between two sites in Weymouth - at Cranford Avenue and Newstead Road. In 2001, the college vacated the Newstead Road site and moved to a redeveloped single campus at Cranford Avenue.

The history of Weymouth College begins with the founding of Weymouth Grammar School at a site near Weymouth's Westham Bridge in 1862. New school buildings were built on the Dorchester Road in 1864 and the school was renamed Weymouth College. Those premises still stand today alongside the Cranford Avenue campus and are being converted into apartments. The Second World War forced the closure of the college in 1940, but it came back into educational use as a teacher training college in 1946. Twenty years later it became part of the Dorset Institute of Higher Education and in 1985 it became a tertiary college, schooling 16 to 18-year-olds.

Weymouth College's Newstead Road site has now been demolished and is being replaced by housing. The site was used for educational purposes for nearly 90 years - as Weymouth Grammar School and South Dorset Technical College as well as Weymouth College. It was initially home to Weymouth Secondary School - opened in 1913 and renamed Weymouth Grammar School in 1927. From 1939, the school shared the site with the South Dorset Technical College, formerly known as the Weymouth Engineering and Technical School and based in Weymouth's Commercial Road.

By the sixties, Weymouth Grammar School had outgrown its accommodation and pupils moved to a site in Chickerell Road. More major changes came in 1985 when the reorganisation of secondary education resulted in the birth of Weymouth College - then split between the Newstead Road and Cranford Avenue sites.