Rydal Penrhos

Rydal Penrhos is a private co-educational boarding school in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. It is the only Methodist school in the independent sector in Wales. It is located on multiple sites around the town with a site in the neighbouring village of Rhos-on-Sea where it keeps its watersports equipment for easy access to the beach.

The school, as it exists today, started life as three separate institutions:

• Rydal (incorporating the then Rydal Preparatory School, situated on the Erskine House campus and surrounds) has occupied the current school site as, firstly, a boys-only school and later, from the 1980s, a co-educational school.

• Penrhos College was a girls-only boarding school located near Rhos-on-Sea.

• Lyndon School was a private preparatory school situated in Colwyn Bay.

Rydal School and Penrhos College became known as Rydal Penrhos School following their merger in 1999. Initially they were run as three separate "divisions": "preparatory", "girls" and "co-educational", reflecting the three formerly separate incarnations. The Penrhos College campus was eventually closed down and sold for re-development, and its pupils moved to the main Rydal campus, with the divisions being amalgamated into a single entity. As with any major institutional reform, the merger and integration project was not without its controversy, not least over the sale of the former Penrhos site and the restructuring of the staff. The associated prep school was known as "Lyndon Preparatory School" following a merger with another local private primary school in 2003. The former Lyndon school campus was disposed of and staff and students were relocated to the larger existing Rydal Preparatory School campus.

Rydal Penrhos has a strong tradition in sports and the arts. The school's 1st teams in both hockey and rugby have, in recent years, been a strong selling point for the school, which thrives on their successes. The 1st XI hockey team, along with the U-16 team, have been exceptionally successful in the Welsh Nationals, claiming several titles in the past 5 years. In 2007, the U-16 boys team won the North Wales Final at hockey, only to go on and lose in the final on the Nationals.