The suburb was proclaimed on a portion of land previously belonging to Koedoespoort, which was owned by Lourens Cornelius Bronkhorst in the nineteenth century.An heir to Bronkhorst's estate sold the farm in 1885 to the Wesleyan Methodist Society.The suburb is named after Hatfield House, an estate in Hertfordshire, England that belonged to William Palmer, 2nd Earl of Selborne, who became Governor of the Transvaal in 1905.This was later followed by the Rissik Station Stores and the multi-storey Hatfield Galleries on Burnett Street.[2] The area is also home to the Pretoria East Bowling club on Burnett Street.