History of the schools: Hunsdon House
In 1915 Miss Katharine S. Woods moved to London Road, Headington with her mother so that she could go to the University of Oxford.
After the First World War the Woods family bought a plot of land running between the newly built Stephen Road and Manor (now Osler) Road in memory of Katharine's brother, Eric Woods, who had been killed in the war. They built a home for themselves at the Stephen Road end which they named Hunsdon House.
Miss Woods started teaching in the dining room of their house in Stephen Road, and when numbers grew to 15, she rented the garden room of Mrs Blackburn of Sandfield Cottage, a large house which occupied the site of the present Horwood Close.
Katharine eventually built Hunsdon House Garden School, facing on to Osler Road, in the back garden of Hunsdon House. It had windows and doors which could open wide to the south and east, and other nurseries regarded it as a model. In 1931 there were fifteen children at the school, aged between 2 and 8.
From the 1940s the school was owned by Mr & Mrs Archie Utin, and when they retired in 1974 Mrs Rosemarie Deepwell took over.
Hunsdon House Nursery School is still going strong and caters for children aged from 2½ to 5.
