At the beginning of the 19th century, few children received any sort of education. The sons of the rich may have attended one of theexpensive public schools while their sisters, if they were lucky, were taught by tutors in their own homes. The children of the poor remained largely untaught. But all this was about to change.

The industrial revolution was creating rapid and far reaching change. People were moving from the depressed rural areas to the towns in search of work. Added to this, the development of factory based production produced the most startling urban population growth the country has ever seen. The need to provide a social structure to support this growth became pressing.

In 1810, the Hitchin lawyer and philanthropist William Wilshere founded a day school for "the sons of the labouring poor" in a two-storey malt house in what is now called Queen Street, Hitchin. The classroom, a large room on the ground floor, held 150 boys each of whom was charged one penny per week.

Wilshere's school was the first Lancasterian school in Hertfordshire and the Hitchin British Schools were afffiliated to the British and Foreign School Society from the beginning, following its standards and curriculum. A girls' school located above the boys' school, was started in 1819.

Although nothing remains of these original buildings, a memorial stone inscribed "1810 W.W." was incorporated into the new Lancasterian Teaching Room built to house 300 boys in 1837 the year Queen Victoria came to the throne.