Pit Corder was born at 4 Bootham Terrace, York, into a Quaker family. His full name was Stephen Pit Corder. His father, Philip Corder (b. 1885), was a schoolteacher from an English family, and his mother, Johanna Adriana van der Mersch (b. 1887), was Dutch. Pit studied at Bootham School, a Quaker boarding school near York. His father was a master at the school. Corder studied modern languages at Merton College, Oxford University, from 1936 to 1939.