Lockers Park School

Lockers Park School is a day and boarding preparatory school for 140 boys, situated in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. Each year it sends boys to the main public schools in the UK, including Harrow, Eton, Radley and Rugby. Its current headmaster is Henry Wickham, who took up the post in September 2007. He is married to the novelist Sophie Kinsella, and they have three sons.

Lockers Park has a long and distinguished history. It was founded in 1874 by Henry Montagu Draper to be a foundation school preparing boys for Rugby School, and is thus one of the earliest purpose-built preparatory schools in England.

It is built on the parkland of a significant Georgian house, called The Lockers, which still exists, now divided into apartments. Henry Draper took the opportunity to buy the 23 acres of parkland when the owner of The Lockers fell on hard times, and built a school with facilities to house the sons of gentlefolk who intended their sons for Rugby. He was guided in his choice of location by the proximity of the site to Boxmoor (now Hemel Hempstead) station, and its situation on the route from London to Rugby.

In the following years Lockers Park school established itself as one of a handful of high-quality preparatory schools, sending boys to Eton, Harrow and Winchester as well as Rugby and the nearer schools of Stowe and Haileybury. Its list of distinguished old boys is long, most notably Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma and His Highness Prince Maurice of Battenberg – but it also has the less proud boast to have educated Guy Burgess, the infamous Russian spy. The Nawab of Pataudi, famous captain of the Indian Cricket team, is also an old boy.

Many traditions from the days of Draper still continue, maintained within the fully-updated buildings and alongside the modern and vibrant curriculum. Tuck and sweets (which Draper did his best to discourage parents from supplying to boys on exeats!) are still known as ‘slatter’, after Mr Slatter who owned a sweet shop in Boxmoor; boys have ‘Sets’ rather than houses, the names being those of famous army and navy captains, Beatty, Haig, Jellicoe, Kitchener, Mountbatten and Roberts; and the forward-thinking system of effort grades, emphasizing attitude and application as the most important elements of education, is the same today as that instituted by the earliest Headmaster.

Lockers Park School, Lockers Park Lane, Hemel Hempstead HP1 1TL 01442 251712 www.lockerspark.herts.sch.uk