The County Secondary School opened on Tuesday 17 September 1929, being officially opened on Friday 4 October 1929 by the sister of Henry Mellish, who had died in February 1927, the first Chairman of Notts Education Committee in 1903.

The school competed in the radio series Top of the Form in Heat 2 for England on Monday 8 October 1956 at 7.30pm on the Light Programme.

[1] The team appeared on the front page of the Nottingham Evening Post on 21 September 1956.

The captain was David Leivers, 17, the head boy of 4 Upper Canaan in Ruddington, Bill Buxton (November 1943 - 14 September 2016) who studied Mechanical Sciences at St. John’s College, Cambridge, aged 12, of Attenborough,[2] Michael Carson (c.1943 - 12 July 2018), aged 13, of 15 Meadow Close in Hucknall, who studied Geography at Cambridge, later Professor of Geography, at McGill University in Canada, and Roger S Hursthouse, 15 of 34 Little Green Road in Woodborough, who became a local businessman.

[6] David Leivers became a doctor, who went to University College Oxford, and trained in London.

This merged the school with the other major educational institute in the local area, River Leen (formerly Alderman Derbyshire).

[12] Henry Mellish School was judged to require special measures in 2005, but had since vastly improved - the school gained its specialist sports college status with information and communication technology (ICT) as a second specialism in March 2005.