Edith Pretty with her peers at Roedean - second from left on the back row
The Dig, which came out on Friday, tells the story of Edith Pretty, who attended the Brighton girls’ school from 1894 to 1899 – not long after Penelope, Dorothy and Millicent Lawrence opened the school in its first incarnation as Wimbledon House. During Edith’s time, the sisters moved the school to its present site overlooking the English Channel at the city’s eastern end.
Edith developed a love of archaeology as a child and young woman thanks to many trips to Pompeii, Luxor and the Pyramids and went on to make the most significant British archaeological find ever when in 1939 she unearthed the Sutton Hoo Anglo Saxon ship burial.