[1] In 1961, pupils and staff moved into partially completed buildings on the present site, which was visited in March 1962 by Minister of Education David Eccles.

[2] One of the first of the new breed of post-war technical grammar schools, it was initially run along very traditional lines by Hayward.

[3] The school quickly gained a reputation for innovation and modern curricula, being one of the first in the area to pioneer the Nuffield Physics syllabus, SMP for Mathematics and introducing computer studies, including the first school link to the Hatfield Polytechnic mainframe computer.

Each was named after famous scientists from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge,[11] These houses were used for administrative purposes, for competitions such as sports day and to work out which form has the best attendance.

After the school converted from Grammar to Comprehensive the house system and names were retained but were referred to as 'forms' from then on.

The four original houses were: Two more were added to cope with larger intake of pupils A seventh form, Pippard, was introduced in 1990.

Its productions and concerts included The Down-Going of Orpheus Hawkins, Godspell, Dark Side of the Moon and Volpone.