The school was founded in 1889 by Dr. Cecil Reddie a well-known British scholar and educator. Advocating that understanding and action are the goals of learning rather than rote knowledge,Dr. Cecil Reddie emphasized the function of school in cultivating pupils’ comprehensive quality, lifelong learning abilities and social responsibilities.
Dr. Cecil Reddie (1858/10-1932/2) Founder of the New Educational Movement

We encourage our students to be the best they can be, and their character and temperament showcase Abbotsholme's tradition of uniqueness, excellence and unity. We value all-round development, provide students with moral, intellectual, physical and aesthetic development opportunities. Performing well academically,students of Abbotsholme are able to excel in the field of games and create inspirational music; they also display their creativity and self-challenging spirit with our expanded farm and outdoor education programs.

• Dr. Robin Gandy, a well-known mathematician and logician, a good partner and close friend of Alan Turing, Oxford University named a building after him in memory of his outstanding contributions to mathematics and code deciphering;
• Dr. Roger Altounyan, a renowned physicist and pharmacologist who graduated from Cambridge University and discovered sodium cromoglycate;
• Sir Samuel Phillips Bedson, a renowned biologist, professor of Durham University;
• Muir Wood, President of the British International Tunnelling Association, designed the world's second longest water supply system – the 80-kilometre-long Orange–Fish River tunnel in South Africa;
• Giles Lytton Strachey, the famous British biographer , a representative writer of 20th-century biographical literature along with Moroya in France and Zweig in Germany.