History of the schools: Josca’s
Josca’s Preparatory School began life in Headington, first in Jack Straw’s Lane and then in Latimer Road.
Mrs Eveline Farrell (a graduate of St Hilda’s College who died at the age of 80 in 1992) and her husband Brian Farrell (a Philosophy tutor at Corpus Christi College) founded Josca’s in the early 1950s when they failed to find satisfactory schools in Oxford for their three sons: they considered the state schools of poor quality, and the private schools snobbish.
The school, designed to prepare boys aged from 7 to 13 for Common Entrance, initially consisted of only ten boys (including the three Farrells), and operated from an outbuilding in the Farrells’ garden at Underwood in Jack Straw’s Lane. It was named Josca’s after the nickname of the eldest brother, Julian Farrell.
In 1956 the school moved to a new large house in Latimer Road, between Nos. 2 and 4 and eccentrically allocated the number 5, and its first headmaster was J. M. Clotworthy. It steadily expanded to 90 pupils, taking in weekly boarders as well as day boys.
In 1969 the owners of the Latimer Road house wished to sell it and the school had to move. From April 1970 the 70 boys were transported each day to the present school site at Frilford Heath.
The sports presenter Jim Rosenthal (born 1947) was one of the early pupils at the school in Headington.
The old Josca’s school building in Latimer Road was demolished to make way for St Luke’s Hospital in 1982.
