The school was established in 1926 by Jessie Elliot-Pyle in Brownlow Road with three pupils, and was named after Dunnottar Castle in Scotland. She gave it the motto Do ut Des, which is translated as I give that thou may'st give. She chose for the school’s crest a pelican mother nurturing her young. In 1933, the school moved to the High Trees Estate in a mansion called "High Trees" which had been built by Walter Blanford Waterlow, fourth mayor of Reigate, in 1867. In 1874, Waterlow remarried his younger brother's widow, Maria Waterlow, mother of Sir Ernest Albert Waterlow. Additions had been made to the mansion in about 1908. In 1961, it changed from private ownership to being owned by a charitable trust. In 1975, it joined the Association of Governing Bodies of Girls' Public Schools, which is now called the Girls' Schools Association. In March 2014 the school became part of United Learning and announced that it would become a co-educational school for ages 11 to 18 from September 2014. United Learning made immediate investments in Dunottar to develop the already excellent facilities. Recent developments include the construction of a £2.2 million Sixth Form Centre, opened in April 2019, providing additional modern classrooms, individual and collaborative study areas, along with a café and recreation room. Construction work is now underway to build a new Assembly Hall with Drama and Music facilities to meet the future needs of the school community. In February 2018, the school launched an exciting partnership with Surrey Cricket to create a Surrey Cricket Development and Performance Centre at Dunottar. This partnership created a number of opportunities for the school community, with the installation of a brand new 4-lane indoor cricket net system; these top-class, county standard cricket facilities enable pupils to take advantage of specialist training programmes. The Surrey Cricket Foundation, alongside local cricket clubs, also utilise these facilities to host county coaching and development courses for adults and children during the school holidays or off-season. In July 2019, Dunottar was awarded the prestigious Education Business Award for the ‘Outstanding Progress – UK Independent Schools’ category 2019. Now in their 12th year, the Education Business Awards recognise schools across the UK for improving the standard of education and the life chances of their students, highlighting the vital work of educational professionals up and down the country.
