Gosford Hill School

Gosford Hill School is a co-educational secondary school with academy status in the village of Gosford near Kidlington, Oxfordshire. It is also a Specialist College of Mathematics and Computing; the first school in Oxfordshire to receive this award. In 2007 the school celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding in 1932.HistoryThe school, originally called the Kidlington Church of England Central School, was built to teach children over the age of 11 whose numbers had grown during the 1920s to the point where the National School in the village was not able to accommodate them. By combining the number of over-11s from Kidlington with those from the church schools in the surrounding villages of Begbroke, Cassington, Hampton Poyle, Islip, Noke, Oddington, Shipton-on-Cherwell, Thrupp and Yarnton a sufficient number was achieved to justify the cost of a new school.The first Headteacher, when the school opened on 7 September 1932, was Herbert Chapman who had been the head of the National SchoolThe original buildings, designed by R Fielding Dodd, ARIBA and GT Gardner consisted of 4 classrooms and a Practical Studies Centre. Two more classrooms were added in 1934. The site of 4acre had been part of Gosford Hill Farm, which itself had been turned into Oxford Zoological Gardens by Frank Gray by the time the school was built.