Happy Birthday

Monday 2nd November 1908 to Thursday 2nd November 2017

St Albans' Own East End wishes the children, teachers, friends and parents of

Fleetville Infant School & Nursery and Fleetville Junior School

a Happy 109th Birthday.

It is a first for this blog, otherwise we could be wishing people and places birthday greetings all the time.  Nor is there any particular reason for it on this occasion, other than the teachers at Fleetville Infant School had located the original school log book and had noted the effusively written first page on the day of opening, Monday 2nd November 1908, written in the flourishing hand of Mr Charles Wimbrey, newly appointed Head Teacher of the Fleetville Elementary Schools.

The original 3-classroom Infant building opened in 1914.

The building accommodated not only infants, but junior aged children and seniors, up to the age of thirteen.  Teachers across the district will be familiar with the next fact.  Only one of the two original buildings was opened (the smaller building was completed six years later) and the November date indicates that the handover was at least two months late!

Part of the frontage of the large building as children
celebrated the school's centenary.

Fleetville has witnessed several protest meetings since the district's birth in 1897; the first of which was the result of discontent among parents who had moved into the new houses in the years up to 1904.  The young Hertfordshire County Council Education Department, in wrestling with the issue of school places, chose the obvious solution of adding more accommodation to the buildings already open at St Peter's Rural Schools, then also known as Camp School.  However, its statement contained a critical rider to the authority's intention to build extensions to the rural school: "equivalent in size to a new school."  The meeting of parents at the Institute – at the corner of Hatfield Road and Arthur Road – simply demanded that these extensions should be built as a new school in Fleetville.

Into the former senior school buildings, dating from 1931, moved Fleetville
Juniors in 1976 – and playing fields for the first time.

No land had been reserved for a new school, nor any recreational open space.  So the new school was created by purchasing a number of house plots along Royal and Tess roads (the latter is now Woodstock Road South).

Over the decades the parents had cause to complain on several occasions about overcrowding, but now the protest meetings could take place in the school's own hall.  Classes, even in the Infant department, rose above fifty; temporary huts arrived; classes met in the old nursery (now the Community Centre); rooms in the former police houses; St Paul's Church; and finally two rooms in the former HORSA huts at Beaumont School.  This last element of "outreach" became known as the Fleetville Extension School, and when permanent buildings were constructed nearby, was renamed  Oakwood JMI School.

Not just a plain playground, but interesting spaces for young children.

Following further protest meetings the Junior Department moved across the road to the empty former Central School / Girls' Grammar School / Beaumont Girls' School / Sandfield School.  Both sections of the school felt there was space to breathe at last.

At various times during the past fifty years the original buildings have, of course, undergone a number of changes, from extensions to indoor toilets; link doorways between many of the classrooms; a kitchen; and a "new" hall in place of the old wooden huts.  The nursery has moved from the temporary wartime building and brought on site and the former divided tarmac playground (it had been gravel before that) is now a much more inviting series of spaces for children to enjoy.

The school has in its possession an interesting collection of photographs, some of which also appear on this website.  However, there will surely be a much wider range in the shoeboxes and albums of former pupils.  After all, there are now 109 years of learning behind today's celebration.  Memories too.  What might we recall about the school which has been a central part of Fleetville for almost all of the district's life?