Stanton Williams completes Winchester College's first girls' boarding houses

Winchester College has opened dedicated boarding houses for girls, 644 years after its founding and four years after it admitted its first day girls. Stanton Williams designed the 5,450-square-metre scheme, which the firm calls "an important moment in Winchester College's 644-year history."

The houses anchor the next stage of the College's move to coeducation. That shift began in 2022, when Winchester admitted day girls into the sixth form. Until now, those students lacked what the architects describe as "a place that is unmistakably their own within the College."

Now they have one. It took six centuries, a school known for holding its ground, and a firm with a track record in academic buildings.

What do the new houses deliver?

The project does two jobs at once, per the architects' text. It gives girls boarding accommodation that belongs to them, and it does so without breaking from the College's established character. Stanton Williams writes that the houses remain "firmly rooted in Winchester's architectural tradition and educational ethos."

That balancing act defines the brief. A 14th-century institution doesn't reinvent itself overnight; it adds rooms and lets them argue the point.

The material palette leans traditional. Craftstone supplied stonework, Gartec the lifting platforms, Howdens the joinery. Jack Hobhouse photographed the completed scheme.

Stanton Williams served as lead architect. The firm's own text is the source for the project's framing — history made, roots kept.

Why 2026 matters for Winchester

The completion, dated 2026, follows the College's phased approach: day girls in the sixth form from 2022, boarding accommodation now. Each step tests whether a 644-year-old institution can widen its doors without redecorating its identity.

On the architects' account, it can. The houses sit within Winchester's tradition rather than against it, which is precisely the argument a school like this needs its buildings to make quietly.

The next measure is occupation. Whether the houses feel "unmistakably their own" to the students moving in will be decided not by the architects but by the girls who live there.