Frensham Heights is a well-known local school with a reputation for progressive ideas. It was leased to the school by the tobacco heiress, Edith Douglas Hamilton, at a peppercorn rental in 1925. However, the house and location, previously known as Frensham Hill and, before that, as Firgrove, have an interesting history. The original Firgrove estate was enlarged as a result of the parliamentary enclosures of the 1850s. It was owned first by Neston Fuller, a wealthy sportsman, then by Charles Taylor, a professional cricketer, before being torn down and replaced by the brewer Charles Charrington with the magnificent building one sees today. He, in turn, was bought out by Charles Hay-Walker, one of the great engineer contractors of the Victorian Age. The history of the house, along with the scandals and Edwardian frolics associated with it, provides a fascinating insight into the social history of England in the years before the First World War, and its fate as a military hospital provides a poignant contrast.  Here, W G Grace and Ranjitsinhji played cricket, and here soldiers convalesced with their broken minds and amputated limbs. The talk, given by Dr. Roy Waight, will cover the eventful century between the building of Firgrove House and the gift of the estate to the newly created school of Frensham Heights.