Short History of Sir Thomas Boughey High School

The school traces its history back to 1861 when Mrs C Wilbraham, wife of the Vicar of Audley, opened a small voluntary school on land given by Sir Thomas Boughey. Buildings were constructed at the corner of what is now Station Road and High Street Halmer End. Although these builings were demolished in the 1980s the foundation stone remains. Following the establishment of state education the school was taken over by Staffordshire County Council in 1910. New buildings were added in 1913. These consisted of 6 classrooms, a small hall, cloakarea and offices. (This is the builing now housing the History and English Departments. The school continued as an all-age school until 1938, when it became a Secondary School serving the whole of the Audley area. As the school grew, further extensions were added in 1964 comprising a large school hall and gym facilities. This building gained much praise at the time for its architectual design.

Between the wars extensions were added form essentially a letter C type shape. These consisted of science laboratories, craft rooms and a School Hall. Set around a central playground.

After the war new Acts of parliament established 'free Secondary Education for all' and the school became re-organised as a Secondary Modern School. Extensions added a new large modern combined Hall and Gym and a small library.

The school became a Comprehensive in 1980 and was renamed Sir Thomas Boughey High School after the original local landowner. Major building works improved existing accommodation and added extensions that doubled its student capacity. These extensions provided a new Science and Technology centre and with the new fields that were purchased large sports fields as well as extensive Sports facilities including a large carpeted sports hall.

Over the last five years the building has been extensively re-modelled to provide the most up-to-date facilities possible. The building is extensively networked and has high quality computer facilities to meet the needs of today's society.

The building now contains all the specialist accommodation needed for the whole range of courses that a good comprehensive school should offer, and has facilities that are the envy of many other schools.

Our school information service is a computer based service running on PCs across the school. Amongst other information it contains a vast range of resources for the study of local history.