Hadham Hall: Exhibition at South Mill Arts marks 70th anniversary of former secondary school at Little Hadham

South Mill Arts is hosting an exhibition to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the former Hadham Hall School. Indie reporter and former pupil Hollie Ryder looks back with fondness at her time there...

A special exhibition marking the 70th anniversary of the former Hadham Hall School is being staged at South Mill Arts this month.

I was one of the last pupils when it closed in 1990 to merge with Margaret Dane School in Bishop's Stortford to become Birchwood High, so being given this story brought back many happy memories.

Hadham Hall was set in the middle of the countryside in Little Hadham, off the A120, in and around an impressive Elizabethan mansion where ghost stories abounded and school life was rather unique.

It was a secondary modern with students who also boarded, and its grand setting and expanse of outside space, complete with tennis courts and open-air swimming pool, made it feel and look more like a private school – more Mallory Towers than Grange Hill.

Obviously, everyone's recollections of their time at school will differ, but for me it was a joyous period of my life and I count myself incredibly lucky to have experienced my formative years there.

Indeed, our school magazine, Breaktime, kick-started my dreams of becoming a journalist when I got the chance to interview some famous faces – namely, actor Tom Conti and broadcaster Michael Aspel.

I always thought my year group was particularly special. I guess most would say that, but many of us are still in contact and we bump into former teachers in town now and then. There is an active Hadham Hall Facebook group where past pupils reminisce and reunite. It holds special memories for many.

I remember crying the day we left and the school shut for good – our last year of sixth form was spent at Birchwood.

I still have a commemorative mug we were given marked 1952-1990, some press cuttings of our hockey team after we won a county championship and my school shirt signed by my classmates on the day we left ahead of our GCSEs.

Indeed, the display of memorabilia at South Mill Arts, which runs until Friday September 30, features photos, examples of the uniform and a variety of school objects that will no doubt be familiar to many.

Run by local education authority Hertfordshire County Council, Hadham Hall ultimately became too costly to run and, after its closure, was sold off to developers for a reputed £3 million.

Many of the site's original listed buildings were renovated into houses. The mansion house still stands proud and is now divided up into private homes, and the once tarmacked playground in front of the former assembly hall, a tudor tithe barn, is now a vast expanse of lawn.

I recently drove up there to have a look round and it was funny to think that I sat my GCSEs in that building!

The gatehouse entrance, where woodwork and metalwork classes were held, is still an imposing sight as you approach down the long driveway. Tales of a runaway carriage that careered through the archway, only to end up in the pond, was a favourite scary tale.

I remember many grand paintings in the entrance hall of the mansion house, where we used to seek shelter at break times in the colder weather, which depicted the families who had lived at Hadham Hall down the centuries. Indeed, our houses were named after them – Baud, Capel, Minet and Elizabeth, the latter a reference to Queen Elizabeth I, who stayed there in 1578 when it was a hunting lodge.

It is a site rich in history dating back to the Roman era. The last owners before it became a school were the Minet family, who owned the estate until 1948 – it had been occupied by troops during both world wars – when they sold it to Herts County Council.

According to Paul Ailey's stortfordhistory.co.uk website, it was transformed into a school at a cost of £65,000.

Its catchment area was Bishop's Stortford and the surrounding rural communities and it opened in September 1952 with 142 pupils.

Says the history guide: "While still preserving the features of the old house, every part of Hadham Hall was utilised: the gatehouse providing storage and workshop accommodation for the school and its associated farming activities, while the tithe barn housed the school's theatre and main assembly hall.

"The house itself became home for the headmaster and dormitories were created for the school's boarders. Classrooms within were oak panelled with beamed ceilings and additional modern, single-storey classrooms were built in the grounds where livestock roamed freely. The once formal Italian garden was turned into a hockey pitch.

"The school survived for 38 years until Hertfordshire County Council decided there were not enough children in the area to justify the expense of keeping it open."

Peter Douglas, who lives in Bishop's Stortford, is the son of Hadham Hall's first headteacher, Edmund Douglas, and helped to organise the exhibition.

He has a close relationship with the school, not least because of his father, and lived there from birth until he finished his education there in 1980.

"For me, it was a bit odd because I was living in the remains of the Edwardian era where, as a child, there was still the elderly gardener belonging to the Minet family," he said. "In terms of my memories it was like living in a fading Edwardian estate with all the things that went with it – the walled garden and the vegetable gardens where all the food was grown for the boarders.

"I had free roam of the whole estate during the holidays so it was a bit isolated at times, but a wonderful place to live.

"It started as a secondary modern with the ethos being it was for people from the local farming community and there were cows, pigs, bees and sheep."

Mr Douglas retired in 1977 when an interim head was appointed before the arrival of Alan Maddox, who was to be the school's last head teacher.

Peter said the South Mill Arts display was a modest one, but, with a café on site, it gave former pupils the chance to meet up.

"This is a very welcome venue that gives people the opportunity to meet up and have a chat and reminisce," he said. "So many in this area would have gone to the school and it's a chance to meet up with old friends."

* The exhibition runs until September 30