Setting and Facilities

Located in the heart of Cambridge

Heritage School, providing both primary and secondary education, is ideally located in the heart of Cambridge. We enjoy access to a large number of outstanding museums and places of cultural and historical interest, and to many fascinating people who are eager to share their interests with school children. We are three minutes away from the Cambridge University Botanical Gardens, and 10 minutes from the Fitzwilliam Museum. We are less than 15 minutes from the Cambridge station, enabling day trips to London.

With our Enrichment Programme, Nature Walks, and Sport lessons, Heritage classes are out and about most days each week, making the most of all that Cambridge has to offer.

School Buildings

Heritage School is based at 17-19 Brookside, three attractive Victorian houses, just off Trumpington Road. We have a second site, Panton Hall on Panton Street, a two minute walk from the main school. This is used for assemblies, Senior exams, Stay & Play, drama and many of our enrichment activities.

Our Infant and Junior Schools are housed in 18-19 Brookside and our Senior School and main office is housed in 17 Brookside. We have a playground and space for bicycle parking at the back of the facility. The Infant and Juniors Schools have a dedicated art room, as does the Senior School.

The Senior School has a purpose-built science room, with all of the resources necessary to undertake experimental science up to the IGCSE level. There is an ever expanding library next to a large hall which is used by all pupils for assemblies, lunches, drama performances and various lessons.

Use of Additional Facilities

We are very grateful to Clare Hall for letting us the use Clare Wood – just south of the school along Hobson’s Conduit – for our Forest School. We are also able to hire facilities locally to support our sports programme, as well as using public land nearby for cross country. Friendly fixtures are arranged with other schools.

History of our Buildings

18-19 Brookside, home of the Infant and Junior Schools, is a building with historical interest. The leading Suffragist and co-founder of Newnham College, Dame Millicent Fawcett, lived at 18 Brookside from 1875-84 with her husband Henry Fawcett, the Postmaster General and promoter of women’s suffrage.

In 1869, a meeting was held in what is now our Upper Prep classroom to discuss the possibility of organising lectures for women at Cambridge. This idea, originally brought forward by Mr Henry Sidgwick and approved by many distinguished members of the university, needed additional support from the ladies belonging to the University circle. Henry Fawcett was at that time a Professor of Political Economics and Millicent became an active proponent of carrying the proposal forward, inviting a number of her friends and acquaintances to meet in her drawing-room to consider Mr Sidgwick’s proposal. She gained their approval and ultimately became a great supporter of Women’s Higher Education.

Mr and Mrs Fawcett’s equally distinguished daughter, Philippa Garrett Fawcett, lived at 18 Brookside from the ages of 6 to 16. She was the first woman to obtain the top score in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos exams and went on to teach Mathematics at Newnham College. Her aunt, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, was the first English female doctor.

We feel privileged to follow in the footsteps of these great women who cared so passionately about the need for women to have equal voting rights and equal rights to an academic education. We embrace this special history of the place we now occupy, and see our work as linked in part to theirs.