Thomas Hardye CCF

The Thomas Hardye School is a secondary academy school in Dorchester, Dorset, England. It is also part of the DASP group.HistoryGrammar schoolThe school is named after a distant collateral ancestor of the author Thomas Hardy and Admiral Thomas Hardy; Thomas Hardye of Melcombe Regis and Frampton. Hardye was a property owner who endowed the Dorchester 'free' school in 1579, ten years after its completion by the town. His monument is on the south wall of St. Peter's Church. The Tudor grammar school offered free education to boys of the town and neighbourhood and flourished under the Puritan regime of Revd. John White. It survived the doldrums of the 18th century, though at times having very few scholars, and struggled through the first half of the 19th century, closing in 1879. It was substantially rebuilt and re-opened in 1883. It was known as Dorchester Grammar School until 1952 or 1953, when the name Hardye's School was adopted as a reminder of the 16th century founder and links to the Hardye family.Though he had as a child attended Isaac Last's rival establishment in Durngate Street, Thomas Hardy, the author, laid one of the foundation stones for the school's new building on the out-of-town Fordington site in 1927 - parents attached great importance to health as an aspect of education at the time. The land had previously belonged to the Duchy of Cornwall, and the new building was formally opened in 1928 by the Duke of Cornwall, the then Prince of Egypt, and remained the 'Hardye's' site until 1992. The Memorial Gates, dedicated in 1957, escaped demolition and were moved to the new Thomas Hardye School. Dorchester Grammar School for Girls was opened in around 1930, and Dorchester Modern School some time after the 1944 Education Act. These schools formed the basis of the Thomas Hardye School.