In 1870 Frederick Temple was appointed chair of the Rugby School Governing Body. In 1871 he established The Laurels School, for the daughters of Rugby School Masters, the girls used the classrooms in School House and played sports on the Close until the school was moved to Wroxall Abbey. Just over 100 years after The Laurels was established the first three girls entered Rugby School as members of the Lower XX in September 1975, paving the way to Rugby becoming fully coeducational in the 1990s.

The decision to admit girls was revealed by the then Head Master Jim Woodhouse on Speech Day July 1975. The girls, including Alison Parker, entered Rugby in a year which had a total of 768 boys. A house for girls had not yet been established and both were day members of Stanley House in their first year (Stanley later became a girls house in 1995). In September 1976 they were joined by 10 more girls in the who entered the Lower XX. In that year the School opened two new houses Crescent and Southfield.

Crescent House on Horton Crescent was opened as the first house for girls attending Rugby School. Before this the house was used by the school as a temporary sanitorium during an influenza epidemic in 1907 and for storing boats belonging to the sailing club in the 1950s. The House closed in 1991.

Girls were also linked to a boys house for their meals, as Crescent had no kitchen. With a growing number of girls entering the LXX Dean House was opened in 1978/79 in one wing of the sanatorium, on Hillmorton Road, under Mr. and Mrs. Hughes. They opened the house to 19 girls to meet the demand for places at the School. The House was named after the Chairman of the Governing Body Sir Patrick Dean. In that year there were a total of 32 girls.

From 1975 to 1993 Rugby admitted girls into the Upper School. The girls took part in a number of School activities including:

• Community Action (now Rugby 360);
• music including Folk Club;
• physical education courses (the sports department planned to include music and movement, dance, fitness and some coaching in their course in the 1980s);
• Sports teams including Sailing, boating, windsurfing, badminton, tennis, squash, swimming and lacrosse;
• Drama
• Debating

A third house Southfield was opened in 1984, the original building for Southfield House, 8 Horton Crescent, was purchased by the school at auction in the 1920s. It was possibly rented out by the school until the 1940s when the gardens were used by the School.

The number of girls continued to grow throughout the 1980s and it was hoped there would be 100 by 1989. In preparation for this the opening of a fourth girls house, Rupert Brooke, was planned in 1987. Rupert Brooke was created as a boarding house from an original row of four town houses built in the 1860s-70s. It opened as a girls' house in 1988 under the leadership of Stephen Drew who had masterminded the Rupert Brooke Centenary celebrations the year before.

While the number of girls entering Rugby grew over the late 1970s, the early 1990s would see the introduction of girls to all year groups. In our next blog we will look at how Rugby School went from introducing girls to the F Block to approaching the 50th anniversary of co-education.