Hazlegrove School Art Print

A place shaped by history, education and personal connection.

Set in the Somerset countryside near Sparkford, Hazlegrove School occupies Hazlegrove House and its surrounding parkland.

Hazlegrove, the prep school of King's Bruton, is part of an educational lineage that spans more than five centuries and has a fascinating place within the long history of education in Somerset. Its story reaches back to the 16th century, when the school was dissolved following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, only to be restored ten years later after a petition to Edward VI. Re-established as the Free Grammar School of King Edward the Sixth, this royal foundation is reflected in the crown above the dolphin on the school's crest. The school has continued to evolve over the centuries. In 1947, following the Second World War, the Junior School moved to Hazlegrove House to meet growing demand for places.

For me, Hazlegrove has another connection. I lived and worked at King's College in nearby Taunton, where groups of children from Hazlegrove would join every year. That time at King's gave me a deep familiarity with the Somerset landscape and with the particular sense of place created by its schools, buildings, grounds and surrounding countryside. Hazlegrove therefore forms part of a wider landscape that is woven into my own memories and experience.

This print is therefore as much about connection and memory as landscape.

Created in my distinctive digital collage style, the landscape is reimagined through layers of colour, texture and fragments of original painting, capturing not simply the appearance of Hazlegrove but something of the atmosphere and character of the place.

A celebration of a much-loved Somerset school and the connections that places can hold.