Numbers have continued to increase and now Aberdour caters for over 300 children.

The school's first headmaster was Edward Gale JP, chairman of Banstead Urban District Council, who had a staff of nine. The school role numbered 322 pupils.

The first entry in the school log is dated April 5 1937 and is by Edward Gale: "This new Boys School opened this morning in new building....."

To visit the current school website click here.

I have in front of me a book prize for Nature Study that was presented to one of my late uncles Roger Teague, in the summer term of 1924, by the then headmaster J S Maitland of Banstead Hall.

I have attached a copy of the certificate from inside the cover.

P. M. (Dick) Tracy

Australia

The regime was tough, but not altogether unlike that of paying residential schools of the time. Later, children came from other parts of London and the London County Council took over responsibility, followed by the Wandsworth Borough Council.

In 1974 the school was closed and the property sold for development as the High Beeches Estate.

The London Metropolitan Archives hold some records of the children who resided at the school however it is known that a good number of records that had been left on site were dumped into a skip when the buildings were demolished.

The image on the right shows the original Beechholme publication which is no longer available.

Our original publication on the school has ben fully updated and you can find more details here.

See also SPECIAL FEATURE on the school which includes numerous pages of memories and photographs as well as helpful tips on how to apply for personal care records from the LMA (1930 to 1965).

Also included is the full list of children attending the school at the time of the 1921 census.

Bluegates (Nork)

Bluegates was a small private school run by
Mrs Thorp in Nork Way.

It catered for children up to the age of nine and existed for at least five years from 1930 onwards.

Source: Geoffrey Robinson archive.

Advert from 1935

In 1903 Garratts Hall was placed on the market by Colonel F.A.H. Lambert. It did not sell, but was rented by Mrs Mary Davies, then principal of a ladies' college in West Norwood. She changed its usage to that of a girls' boarding school, known as Garratts Hall School, which proved highly successful.

Reverend A W Hopkinson, vicar of Banstead from 1918 to 1929, wrote of Mrs Davies: 'She had no academic qualifications, no capital, no influence, she had a trying Cockney accent and latterly was almost blind... nevertheless, by sheer force of personality, and amazing courage, she built up one of the most lucrative schools in England'. One of her students during World War I was Megan Lloyd George, daughter of the Liberal Prime Minister, whose country house at the time was at Walton Heath. Amongst other students were the daughters of Earl Haig, World War I Commander of the British Expedionary Force.

This lavishly illustrated book contains photographs from the archives of the Lambert family which have never been seen before. It traces the fascinating history of the mansion and its occupants from the earliest days to its use as a school for ladies during its latter years to its final demolition to make way for a housing development in the 1930s.

For more details visit our publications page

Read more about the history of Garratts Hall under the Grand Houses section.

Left: Mary Davies courtesy of Heinz Archive at the National Portrait Gallery.

Greenacre school for girls The advertisement on the right was printed in BANSTEAD The official guide published by Burrows. The guide is not dated but a close look through the contents suggests that it was published in about 1949.

In 1932, Heath House, as it was known then, and most of the grounds were purchased by Miss Doris Madalene Sabine Pasley and Miss Enid Patricia Wagstaffe, who opened a private school for girls called Greenacre.

Both women had previously taught at Boume Hall,Ewell, with Miss Pasley as headmistress for three years. Madalene Pasley had read Modern and Medieval Languages at Girton College, Cambridge, and obtained her MA at Canterbury. In 1932 she received a legacy of £500 from Mary Lumsden, former Girton College student and social reformer, enabling her to buy Heath House in Sutton Lane, Banstead. In May 1933, Greenacre School opened with an intake of 17 pupils and four full-time staff. Miss Pasley and Miss Wagstaffe believed that the girls should enter the school at kindergarten level and remain there for the duration of their school years, so that they could develop powers of concentration and prepare themselves happily and freely for adulthood.

The school's evacuation to the West Country during the Second World War is well documented in the collection held by the Surrey History Centre (SHC ref 9790), and Miss Pasley's distinctive character reveals itself in her communications and compositions, including the school song, 'Pioneers' (written by her in 1942). In one wartime circular, Miss Pasley specifically recommends that pupils should not 'visit cinemas or crowded places such as Woolworth's' to avoid the spread of infectious diseases! Files of correspondence from parents and former pupils also reveal the esteem in which Miss Pasley and Miss Wagstaffe were both held.

Further adjoining property was bought and alterations and extensions made to the original buildings as numbers of pupils increased.

In 1955, Miss Pasley resigned as headmistress, but remained at the school as administrative principal and teaching occasionally for a further six years, while Miss Wagstaffe took over as headmistress until 1962.

The school closed in 2017 when in in September of that year, Priory Preparatory and Greenacre Juniors, both in Banstead, and Bramley School, Walton-on-the-Hill, become Banstead Preparatory School, and moved into the entire Greenacre site, in Sutton Lane.

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Memories sent in by Penny Bowen (nee Stephenson)

I attended Greenacre as a boarder from 1963 to 1967 and a day girl from 1967 to 1968. The headmistress during my time at Greenacre was Miss Steele, having taken over from Miss Paisley and Miss Wagstaff about six months before I first came to the school.

When my father retired from the RAF the family moved to Banstead. We lived in Fir Tree Road (opposite Beechholme) from where I was married in September 1972 (in All Saints - the first full RAF wedding in that church). Dr Schofield was the vicar at the time and should have married us (he prepared me for my confirmation) but was too ill to do so, having suffered a severe stroke the year before.

My father was Roy Stephenson who became very active in local politics after my parents moved to Banstead and was, if memory serves me right, the first Mayor of the combined Banstead and Reigate Council - having served on the Banstead Council for a number of years. He was the councillor for Nork.

My mother was June Stephenson who was a nursing sister at the Cuddington Hospital and a very active (and supportive) Lady Mayoress. After leaving Cuddington, she became a district sister, a job she loved.

My Grandfather (Joseph Stephenson) moved to Banstead in the early eighties and I travelled back to the UK with his two great-grandsons to celebrate his 90th birthday in 1982.

I have seen many changes in Banstead over the years I've lived in, and returned to, the Village but will always think of it as home!

Penny

Chisholm, Australia

Parents who moved to the newly developed Nork estate had to send their children to Banstead Village School or else one of the small private schools established in Nork e.g. Bluegates in Nork Way, or Nork Preparatory School in Warren Road and later, Eastgate.

Inevitably, many parents could not justify the expense of a private school and wanted to send their children to a public elementary school. In 1935 the Surrey Education Committee decided that there was no justification for building such a school in Nork but this decision was overturned within three years.

The school then called Nork council School, opened on 19 September 1939.

Click here for more history on this school and how it developed, along with some early photos.

If you have any memories you would like to add please mail the webmaster.

The school was later to becomeknown as Nork Primary and is now part of the Warren Mead Infant and Junior School Partnership.

Warren Mead Infant school is for children from four to seven years of age with a nursery catering for children from three years of age.

The school's original location was south of Warren Farm and the current name reflects that history along with the ancient word for meadow – mead.

Nork Preparatory School

This private school which had large classrooms in the back garden and a large playing field adjacent, was the biggest school in Nork in the 1930s.

Ownership changed hands in 1936 when Mr and Mrs Lloyd used what was then the new scout and guide hut in Warren Road.

In 1938 the school moved to Eastgate and its name was changed to Eastgate School.

On change of ownership, a former assistant mistress, Miss Bell, started her own school, the Sunny Corner School. This was initially set up in Chipstead but later moved to a private house in Nork Way.

Source: Geoffrey Robinson archive.

Advert from 1930s.

The Priory
The Priory school was a preparatory school for boys aged two to thirteen.

It was founded in 1921 and originally it catered for both boys and girls up to the age of twelve. It the 1930's the school moved to Bolter's Lane.

The building, known as Red House, was built in the 1880s by John Jaques I, as a wedding present for his daughter and her husband.

John was the son of the founder of Jaques of London. Established in 1795, they are the oldest sports and games manufacturers in the world. John I is said to have brought the game of croquet to England in the middle of the 19th Century (or at least popularised it) and croquet sets became a mainstay of the firm’s success.

The Happy Families card game was invented under John I’s tenure. His son, John Jaques II, was the inventor of table tennis and many board and parlour games and lived in Red House between 1918 and 1932, when the house was sold and converted into a school.

The Priory was one of the schools in Banstead that remained open throughout World War II. On the 17th November 1940, the school was extensively damaged by fire resulting from a High Explosive incendiary bomb.

The school closed in 2017.

The photograph above was taken in February 2020 and the one below in January 2021.

The building has since been demolished. As of today (Jan 2022) building of new retirement apartments is under way.

Click here for further historical information.

St Hild’s was a prep school for girls that was situated in an Edwardian house on the Kingswood/Burgh Heath border in the late 1910s and early 1920s.

Originally named Four Ways, the house stood (and may still stand today) at the junction of Copt Hill Lane and Alcocks Lane. During the Great War, Lucy de la Mare (nee Coulthard) and her husband Leonard, a stockbroker who had fought as a Rifle Volunteer in the Boer War, and their young family moved from Walton on the Hill to Four Ways and later renamed the house “St Hild”. It was a spacious house with 3 sitting rooms, 8 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and had a large garden with a tennis court, more room than the family themselves needed with their children away at school.

St Hild was not the only big house in that area that housed a small school, with Bernard Langdon-Davies having once run his own prep school in Copthill House, just a short stroll up Copt Hill Lane. Like many private schools in the area, they both no doubt traded off the area’s reputation for healthy fresh air and its high elevation atop the North Downs. It was typical of such small schools that they struggled to pay their way and their existence was probably fleeting.

The de la Mares departed in the mid-1920s and it is not known if St Hild’s remained a school but it seems unlikely. The house reverted to being known as Four Ways when new owners came in.

Lucy de la Mare continued to teach, going on to run a larger school for girls, Laleham, in Eastbourne with Phyllis Jones, one of her teachers from St Hild. 

NOTES: Hilda (or Hild) of Whitby (c. 614 – 680) was a Christian saint and the founding abbess of the monastery at Whitby. An important figure in the Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England, she was abbess at several monasteries. 

Bede describes Hilda as a woman of great energy, who was a skilled administrator and teacher. As a landowner she had many in her employ to care for sheep and cattle, farming, and woodcutting. She gained such a reputation for wisdom that kings and princes sought her advice. Bede writes, "All who knew her called her mother because of her outstanding devotion and grace".

DECEMBER 2008 - The Waitrose supermarket in Banstead High Street was destroyed by fire on the 12th December 2008. For pictures and the latest news see our Special feature.