One-room schoolhouses were common in small towns and rural areas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with children of all grade levels taught in a single room. In Prince George's County, Maryland, public school funding began with an 1816 act of the Maryland legislature, trustees were assigned in 1826 to fund poor children and orphans, and in 1831 the county was divided into school districts so schools would be more convenient to reach. Nottingham School was one of 10 schools established in District Four by 1868. The Nottingham schoolhouse was built in 1911 on a $744.50 budget, using some materials from an older school on the same lot. It had about forty seats, twenty tolerable desks, a teacher's desk, two bookcases, a slate blackboard, a heating stove, and an outhouse but no plumbing. Overlooking the Patuxent River, it served students who usually walked to school and helped with farm work when not in class. Former student Dent Downing recalled walking there with his brothers, being enrolled in first grade at age four by Mrs. Loveless, and remembering the pot-bellied stove, wooden desks, and lack of running water. His aunt, Anona Tootie Duvall, taught there from 1925 to 1931 and remembered a piano, no lighting of any kind, 35 students across multiple grade levels, water carried from a spring, and children taking turns ringing the bell outside. The schoolhouse closed shortly after World War II, and after Irene Downing purchased it in 1950, her heirs later donated it to The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. It remains one of the few one-room schoolhouses left standing.