Police have arrested three former members of staff at a top boarding school on suspicion of historic sex abuse against pupils, including the alleged rape of a girl.

The men, who are all in their 60s, are alleged to have abused as many as nine children at Christ's Hospital in Horsham, West Sussex in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Sussex Police said officers arrested a 66-year-old man in North Yorkshire on 29 January on suspicion of raping a girl aged between 16 and 18 in 1992-94 and indecently assaulting another girl, aged 17, in 1994.

A 65-year-old man was arrested in Shropshire, also on 29 January, on suspicion of indecently assaulting a schoolgirl aged 18 in 1994, a schoolboy, 18, in 1990 and a boy, aged between 15 and 16, in 1988 or 1989.

Officers also arrested a 62-year-old man in west London on 12 June on suspicion of indecently assaulting four girls aged between 14 and 17 in 1985-1993.

All men have been bailed until 15 December.

The school was founded in the 16th century and counts Sir Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb, and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge among its alumni.

It charges boarders up to £31,500 a year and its pupils still wear a Tudor-style uniform of a long blue coat and high yellow socks.

A spokesman told The Sunday Times: "Christ's Hospital takes its moral and legal obligation to safeguard pupils very seriously.