On January 26, 2015, an emergency meeting was convened at Northallerton Town Hall in North Yorkshire. The police had important information to share with the county council schools’ liaison. They had received a tip-off relating to the self-styled ‘provost’ of Queen Ethelburga’s College, Brian Martin. Five years previously, a pupil at the school had alleged she had been assaulted by Martin – but her evidence had been deemed insufficient for a prosecution.
The meeting at Northallerton set in motion a chain of events. The Independent Education and School Safeguarding Division of the Department for Education was informed. The division head, Peter Swift, consulted with legal counsel in London before briefing inspectors from the Independent School’s inspectorate team. Two inspectors arrived unannounced at Thorpe Underwood, the estate that is home to the Queen Ethelburga’s complex, two months later, on 26 March. Brian Martin was not present at the time. What the inspectors found caused considerable concern. ‘At the time of the inspections around 700 CCTV cameras were located around the school.’ The school was ordered to reduce the number of cameras, which it did in time for a follow-up inspection in June.
In July 2015 a new witness contacted police. Following her allegations, police interviewed a number of former teaching staff. An interviewee alleged that when they had worked at the school they had been in the provost’s private office, where Mr Martin had demonstrated that the CCTV system could be used to look into the girls’ dormitories. When the staff member had expressed shock at this, Martin had switched the feed to live TV and denied what had been seen.
In October 2015 Brian Martin was arrested and interviewed on suspicion of indecent assault on a child and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and voyeurism.
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Queen Ethelburga’s College is not what most people think of when they think of a boarding school. There are no cloisters, no frock coats and not much in the way of tradition. The establishment boasts close to 1500 pupils across nursery, pre-prep, prep, middle school and two secondary age schools, more than 50% of whom are international students.
Visitors to the site arrive in vast car-parks, surrounded by acres of all-weather sports pitches and high walls. At the armorial hall that doubles as the interior reception – once you’re past the security at the front – you are welcomed by a pair of stuffed, rampant tigers, an incongruously bling glimpse of the aristocratic English house from a 1980s fantasy of baronial opulence. Attendees to open-days gather in this fine, oak-panelled room where they are invited to fill out forms to indicate whether or not they are members of the armed forces (QR claims it is ‘the preferred school for Forces parents’, offering bursaries to top up the government subsidy on offer to service people posted abroad). Prospective students are offered a promotional teddy bear before being paired up with pupil guides, and setting off on a tour of the campus.
Walking around the grounds it is impossible not to be struck by the wealth of facilities – state of the art gymnasia with cryo-chambers and ice baths, an Olympic-standard swimming pool, modern classrooms – but also by a functionality and modernity and an accompanying sense of soullessness. If it feels like a high-end sports centre, that’s because that’s precisely what it is: Newcastle United and Luton Town do their pre-season training camps here. There is a helicopter pad, and the periphery of the site has been fortified: as the provost told the Financial Times in 2009, to appeal to ‘Russians look for top-quality teaching as well as good security, for protection against mafiosi, among others.’ You may wonder where the school that was founded in 1910 is hiding.
