Hagley State School, which was half a mile from the centre of Hagley in northern Tasmania, opened in 1855. In 1936, it was the site of Hagley Area School, which, shortly after that became Hagley Farm School.
Sir Richard Dry, a Premier of Tasmania who owned the nearby Quamby Estate, donated the land for the school. In 1865, a school building, made of brick according to plans sent from England, opened. According to JS Maslin, a later Headmaster, it was ‘a typical small rural one-teacher school’ with about 35 children.
Hagley is in a mixed farming district and the school was surrounded by farm land. This led to the creation of the farm school. In 1931, the parents and children began establishing vegetable plots. They also planted agricultural plots where they could experiment with different mixes of grasses and clover using a variety of fertilisers. To start a canteen, the children brought milk from their own farms to make cocoa.
After Hagley State School became an area school in 1936, it acquired more students, staff and facilities. In 1940, the government gave it a grant of 200 acres with which to develop the farm school. In the 1940s, Hagley became a boarding school for the sons of former and current servicemen. Later, it accepted three refugees from Europe and nine British child migrants who arrived under the Fairbridge Scheme.
From
1855
To
1936
Alternative Names
Hagley Public School
Subsequent
