One interesting aspect of the history of the school and the district comes from the choice of the name Hurstville. The area had been known as Lord's Forest and Gannon's Forest. W.M. McIntyre, Inspector of Schools in 1875, recommended the name for the new school to be "Forestdale". However, the Council of Education stated that there were already a number of schools of which contained the word Forest and requested Mr McIntyre to suggest another name.
The name Hurstville suited everyone and was adopted. Thus, our community is called after the school. The puzzle does not lie in the name itself, however, but in the reasons behind its choice. In particular the "Hurst" part of the name.
It has been suggested that it comes from the town of Hurst in Lancashire or either of the local identities, Mr Hurst of Peakhurst or the Rev. Hurst, a frequent and welcome visitor to the district. However, it seems more likely that the name came from Mr McIntyre's desire to perpetuate the association with the forest.
The best interpretation of the name comes from these simple definitions:
"Hurst" – a wooded hill or group of trees
"Ville" – an assemblage of houses
Hence, Hurstville : A collection of houses in the woods on a hill.
The first teacher to be appointed was Mr Michael Lappan. For some reason, neither he nor the school seemed very popular. Attendance was poor as enrolment was about 60 but there were said to be another 60 children in the area who did not attend. Of those enrolled, usually only half of them were in regular attendance. Mr Lappan suggested that the reason for this was the lack of a school bell tower.
Mr Jones, School Inspector, suggested the poor attendance was due to Mr Lappan's "advanced age and weakness of discipline". He was also not impressed with the results of exercises he gave to 3rd Class. These exercises included parsing, dictation, a spelling test of 20 words such as "….unnecessary, mignonette, chrysalis, heifer, Reuben and archipelago", and a scripture lesson which necessitated the children placing the following names in the order they were born …Terah, John the Baptist, Seth, Hagar, Herod, Lot and Christ.