The first Hunsdon House School in Stephen Road

The founder of the school, Miss Katharine Seymour Woods, was born at 46 Wellington Square, Oxford on 17 September 1886 and baptised at St Giles's Church. Her father Francis Henry Woods was a clergyman and a Fellow of St John’s College. She was educated at the Corran Collegiate School in Watford (run by Eleanor Frances Jourdain, who was later to become Principal of St Hugh’s College). When her father was appointed Rector of Bainton near Driffield in about 1911, her parents moved up to Yorkshire. At the time of the 1911 census Katharine (24) was living at the Rectory, Northrepps, Norwich where she was working as a governess to the two daughters of the Revd Alan Gwyn Blyth.

Following the death of her father on 1 February 1915, Katherine moved back to the area with her widowed mother Mrs Frances Edith Woods, née Pritchard so that she could become a mature student at the University of Oxford. They initially lived at Rogate at 110 (then 36) London Road, Headington, one of the houses demolished to make way for the present Iceland shop. The 1921 census shows Katharine (34), who was then an Investigator of Rural Industries at the Institute for Agricultural Economic Research in Oxford, still living here on the London Road with her mother Frances, a widow of 62, and her sister Olga (32), who was a hospital nurse at the orthopaedic hospital in Windmill Road.

Soon after that census Mrs Woods bought a plot of land on the west side of the newly built-up Stephen Road (between Nos. 19 and 25) in memory of her son Eric Joseph Woods, who had been killed in the First World War 9 October 1917. She had a home built for herself and her daughter Katharine Seymour Woods which they named Hunsdon House, and in 1922 they moved in and her daughter started a school in the dining room of this house. It had a long back garden which stretched all the way to the present Osler Road (which had not yet been built up).

The second Hunsdon House School at Sandfield Cottage, London Road

When numbers grew to 15, Katharine Woods briefly rented for her school the garden room of Mrs Blackburn of Sandfield Cottage, a large house which occupied the site of the present Horwood Close.

The third and last Hunsdon House School at 12 Osler Road

(former address 10 Manor Road)

Katharine Woods’s mother died at the age of 69 on 20 December 1928, and Katharine inherited her house. She immediately had the present school built in its back garden, facing Osler Road (which was then called Manor Road). Kelly’s Directory for 1929 has the following listing:

Hunsdon House Garden School (for children under 12)
(Miss K. S. Woods A.R.C.M. principal), Manor Road.

Hunsdon House 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 two and eight.

Katharine Seymour Woods was the author of several books, including:

• The rural industries round Oxford: a survey made on behalf of the Institute for Research in Agricultural Economics, University of Oxford (1921)
• Rural Crafts of England (1949)
• Young children and traffic dangers (1952).

A new building was erected at Hunsdon House School in 1934, and the following report appeared in the Oxford Times of 1 June that year:

HUNSDON HOUSE SCHOOL.

Parents and friends gathered at Hunsdon House Garden School, Headington, yesterday, when a new open-air building was opened. Coun. J. R. Benson (chairman of the Education Committee) presided.

Mr. Colin Sharp (headmaster of Abbotsholme School) said the atmosphere of a school should be an extension of the home atmosphere. It should not be an “ordering about” kind of atmosphere. The relationship between people of different ages should not be lost at school by the segregation of children of different ages.

An entertainment was given by the children, who also formed a band of home-made pipes, dulcimers and cymbals.

The Headmistress (Miss K.S. Woods) read a letter from the Secretary of the Education Committee (Mr. A. C. Cameron) in which he said the Committee had resolved that when private schools had been inspected and certified efficient, it would be prepared to record their names in a list of schools as forming part of the education system of the City.

“You are at the moment,” the letter continued, “the only private school of your particular range in Oxford which has had an official report by the Board of Education, and I shall have much pleasure in inscribing you as No. 1 on our list.”

(Alan Charles Cameron, the Secretary of the Education Committee mentioned above, was the husband of the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, and they lived just around the corner from Hunsdon House at Waldencote in the Croft.)

The following advertisement in Kelly's Directory for 1936 shows that the school then took children aged from 5 to 11 as well as those of nursery school age:

In 1943 Miss Katharine Seymour Woods sold the school to Archie Utin (born Aaron Utin to Russian parents in Lambeth on 1 December 1908) and his wife Hilda M. Utin, née Hoddinott. She died at St Luke's Nursing Home (which was then in Linton Road, Oxford) on 30 December 1980.

The Utins owed the school from 1943 until they retired in 1973. They ran it as a pre-prep school until 1965, and then as a nursery school only until they retired in 1973. Archie was also an artist and teacher with the Bury Knowle Art Group.

Mrs Rose Marie Deepwell then bought the premises and ran the school.

From 2005 to 2026 the Headteacher and Proprietor was Helle Angeleri.

The school closed permanently in the summer of 2026 and the building is now the venue for Deepwell Arts.

See also

• Oxford Times, 8 July 1988, p. 19: Portrait of Mary Utin, Head of “Archie’s & Mary’s” private kindergarten in Headington