Hannah More and her two sisters Sally and Patty, of Fishponds, Bristol, first opened a school in May 1758 at 6 Trinity Street, near St Augustine’s Church and Bristol Cathedral. The school then moved to the newly constructed 43 Park Street in 1762, where it remained under the sisters’ care until 1790. It had up to 60 pupils, including the daughters of William Powell, theatre manager, and Amos Cottle, bookseller. More wrote nursery rhymes and fairy tales for the girls, preferring to teach by performance, drama and illustration than by rote. She often took the pupils to the theatre, firstly at Jacob’s Wells, then at King Street and, after Powell’s death, to see John Palmers’ company when it visited Bristol weekly from Orchard Road, Bath. She had been close to the manager, Powell, writing the Prologue to Powell’s Hamlet. Following an initial visit in 1774, the school was frequently visited by Burke. Dr Johnson, another of More's friends and mentors, also visited.
In 1790, More’s sisters sold the school to a former pupil, Selina Mills.