Mary Hare
Mary Hare is a national charity (registered charity number 1048386). Mary Hare School is a non-maintained special school providing for profoundly and severely deaf children and young people from all over the UK. Pupils' fees are paid for by the Local Education Authority where they live.
The Mary Hare Foundation is a separate registered charity (number 1002680) that has been established to raise funds for the work of Mary Hare. We depend on the support of donations, grants and other fundraising activities to develop our work in the field of educating deaf children.
Mary Hare is a registered company number 3085006. Registered address: Arlington Manor, Snelsmore Common, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 3BQ.
Our history
Towards the end of the 19th Century, a number of prominent women were beginning to influence events in ways which were to have a profound effect on developments in 20th Century society. One such woman was the educationalist Miss Mary Hare. Her vision was that deaf children were capable of realising the full potential of their intellect and that they had no need of shelter from the rigours of hearing society in the growing number of asylums for the deaf and dumb. Such shelter served only to deny them opportunities and fundamental rights. She set about overturning the short-sighted view that the deaf child's prime needs were for care and protection, by establishing a small school in London in 1883. By 1916 this centre of learning had blossomed into the Dene Hollow Oral School for the Deaf based in Sussex and widely regarded as one of the best schools for deaf children in the Kingdom. During these twenty or so years of growth and development, Mary Hare had been able to show that her vision was not only justified and realistic, but achievable.
It was to honour the great contribution that this pioneer had made to the education of deaf children, that shortly after her death in 1945, Dene Hollow School was redesignated as the National Grammar School for the Deaf. Bearing her name, The Mary Hare Grammar School came to serve the needs of potentially able severely and profoundly deaf children throughout the United Kingdom. The rapid growth that this change brought necessitated a move to larger premises, and in 1948 the school acquired and occupied its present beautiful site close to Newbury in Berkshire. It is our hope that half a century after Mary Hare's death, the achievements of our pupils today still serve to honour her name and her vision.
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