King's-Edgehill School

King's-Edgehill School is a Canadian independent university preparatory school located in the town of Windsor, Nova Scotia.

King's-Edgehill is the oldest independent school in the British Commonwealth outside the United Kingdom and traces its founding to 1788, when Loyalist refugees from the American Revolutionary War established King's Collegiate School on November 1 in the riverport town of Windsor.

The genteel agricultural town of Windsor was chosen by Charles Inglis, first overseas Bishop of the Anglican Church, over the larger military centre and colonial capital of Halifax (60 km to the southeast) so "...that it be well away from taverns and houses of ill fame,".

In April 1789, King George III gave Royal Assent to the establishment of King's Collegiate School, as well as to the establishment of the University of King's College - the first such honour to be bestowed upon any school in the British Empire. It is also claimed that Prince Edward, Duke of Kent took an interest in King's Collegiate School and University of King's College while stationed in Halifax as Commander-in-Chief, British North America.

In June 1890, the Anglican Diocese of Nova Scotia decided to establish a girl's school in Windsor to complement King's Collegiate School. The Edgehill School opened in January 1891 and a new building began construction on the campus to house the institution the following June 23.

In 1923 a disastrous fire swept through the Windsor campus, causing irreparable damage to the main university buildings. With the encouragement of the Carnegie Foundation, which was promoting the consolidation of all Nova Scotian post-secondary institutions to Halifax around a nucleus formed by Dalhousie University, the University of King's College received funding to move into a newly built campus in Halifax. King's College remains an independent university, although its students enjoy affiliation privileges with Dalhousie. Its campus is located at the corner of Oxford Street and Cobourg Road, occupying the northwest corner of Dalhousie's Studley Campus.

Both King's Collegiate School and the newer Edgehill School remained on the Windsor campus and eventually expanded to include much of the 65-acre site. In 1976 the governing bodies of both schools decided to amalgamate, using the present-day name King's-Edgehill School.