From lessons in church halls through mergers, dame schools, floods, fires and expansions, to state-of-the-art, eco-friendly, 21st century schools, Hatfield has a rich history in the education of its children.
Hatfield Schools in History
Hatfield has known many schools since the foundation of two Charity Schools in the 1700s. The oldest known schools can be found on the Hatfield Schools in History page.
They include early incarnations of both Countess Anne School (today in School Lane) and St Audrey’s School, now Onslow St Audrey’s School (in Old Rectory Drive). A brief timeline for both these schools is given at the bottom of this webpage.
Schools of the Recent Past
To find a school no longer open, but which people may remember, visit our Schools of the Recent Past page. Alternatively, locate your school in the following list:
- Birchwood Nursery
- Bishop’s Wood School (now part of De Havilland School)
- Broad Oaks School (now part of De Havilland School)
- Bush Hall Private School
- Countess Anne School (in Church Street until 1962)
- Cranborne School – Salisbury Infants School. (was in Birchwood)
- Dellfield (Newtown) School
- Downs Infant School & Millwards JM School
- Gascoyne Cecil School (now part of Birchwood School)
- Goldings School
- Hatfield School (Technical School for Boys then Mixed)
- Hazelgrove School
- Howe Dell School (was in Old Rectory Drive)
- New Briars School (formerly Briars Lane School)
- Newtown House (in St Albans Road)
- Onslow School (now part of Onslow St Audrey’s School)
- St Audrey’s School (now part of Onslow St Audrey’s School)
- Stream Woods JM, Infant & Nursery School
Hatfield Schools Today
Here is a (hopefully) complete list of Hatfield schools that are open today. Please contact the Editors of this site if we have missed any:
- Birchwood Avenue Primary School (Birchwood Avenue)
- Bishop’s Hatfield Girls’ School (Woods Avenue)
- Countess Anne School (School Lane)
- De Havilland Primary School (Travellers Lane)
- Green Lanes Primary School (Green Lanes)
- Hatfield Community Free School (Briars Lane)
- Howe Dell Primary School (The Runway)
- Oak View Primary and Nursery School (Woods Avenue)
- Onslow St Audrey’s School (Old Rectory Drive)
- Queenswood School
- Southfield School (Woods Avenue)
- St Philip Howard Catholic Primary School (Woods Avenue)
- The Ryde School (Pleasant Rise)
Timeline – Countess Anne’s and St Audrey’s
Students of Hatfield schools will undoubtedly find the history of these two schools quite hard to follow. Here therefore is a timeline, based largely on the “Hatfield and its People” series of booklets (republished by Hatfield History Society in 2014).
Countess Anne School
1732 | Anne, 5th Countess of Salisbury, founded a Charity School near Lawn House in Hatfield Park. It later moved to Town Lodge at the top of Fore Street. |
1870s | school relocated to Church Street (in what is now St Etheldreda’s Church Hall) |
1912 | Countess Anne Charity School closed. |
1913 | infants from London Road School moved into the vacated premises in Church Street to become Countess Anne Primary School. |
1962 | school relocated to School Lane / Endymion Road building vacated by St Audrey’s School (see below). |
At the time of writing, Countess Anne Primary School is a Church of England Academy in School Lane, Hatfield. See its web site at http://www.countessanneprimary.org.uk/ [link opens in new tab].
St. Audrey’s School
1904 | school building erected in Endymion Road (near corner of School Lane) |
1905 | boys from (overcrowded) London Road School moved in |
1924 | girls from London Road School joined the boys |
1926 | school officially renamed St Audrey’s Mixed School |
1944 | school destroyed by V1 flying bomb |
1946 | new school building erected on same site |
1957 | St Audrey’s relocated to Traveller’s Lane |
1985 | St Audrey’s amalgamated with Onslow School in Old Rectory Drive |
At the time of writing, Onslow St Audrey’s School is a Business & Enterprise Academy located in Old Rectory Drive, Hatfield. See its web site at http://onslow.herts.sch.uk/ [link opens in new tab].
Add your comment about this page
Hatfield School is listed on this page as a Grammar School. It was actually a “Technical School” which was quite different. When I was there pupils of other schools referred to it as “the Tech” although it was separate from the Technical College next door. It was always “mixed” although boys outnumbered girls by 2:1.