We have a plan

In the second of a series of articles about the arrangements for educating the children of Camp and Fleetville we turn our attention to those over eleven years old.

A strategic plan for the re-organisation of schools in the East Ward of St Albans and district had been developed in the first half of the 1920s, but would, in theory, take a decade to implement, assuming that sufficient funds were forthcoming.

However, the circumstances in individual schools were becoming dire and the managers of some schools felt that they could not wait that long for improvements.  At Camp school, for example, there were places for 248 juniors and seniors, and 150 infants.  Although there was still space in the infants the junior/senior department (remember, progress was made through the school by ability and not necessarily by age), the County’s plan to add four further classrooms to a school in the centre of a fast-growing residential population, was at odds with the Board of Education’s re-organisation plans.

Strategically, the development of education services was progressing towards a system which separated schools into those which educated children up to the age of eleven, and those “post-primary schools” which provided a three-year curriculum for seniors up to the age of thirteen or fourteen and a four/five-year secondary curriculum for children up to fifteen or sixteen.  There would no longer be progression by ability.

The plan was to open a boys’ and a girls’ senior school on land which the County had purchased in Hatfield Road, Fleetville (the current Fleetville Juniors site). Camp and Fleetville schools would then become mixed schools for infants and juniors (JMIs).  The problem is that such bold plans (and this was for just the East ward) are very expensive and would take a long time to materialise.  

A surprisingly small senior class at Fleetville, possibly the final year, c1930,
in which senior girls attended the school.
Courtesy Fleetville Infants School & Nursery

In view of this urgency an interim plan was put into place for shorter-term gains, in which one half of the senior school would be constructed, for 320 girls.  Its numbers would come from the girls from Camp and Fleetville schools senior departments.  The Camp senior boys would move to Fleetville to occupy the places freed up by their girls, and the accommodation for Camp would enable the infants and juniors departments to expand.  The senior girls’ school would consist of eight classrooms each large  enough for 40 pupils (the norm at the time), a central hall and a practical block.

These discussions took place at the beginning of 1928, and at the time the education department had not even purchased a full site for one senior school, having just purchased a nominal four-and-a-half acres – enough for buildings but no playground or playing fields; that would have to come later.

Meanwhile, a site in Fleetville had already been pencilled in for a senior girls school to replace the existing Central Girls’ school – the same site!  Central schools were developed to provide further education opportunities, mainly for girls who had often left school up to a year earlier than boys. The Central in St Albans had  restricted accommodation in Victoria Street, part of the old library and school of art.  This was, essentially, a science and handicrafts centre, which itself desperately required replacing,  

Well, that was the plan.  

The Central Girls' School buildings with building added in 1938.

Fleetville and Camp areas were probably not surprised that the plan, which would have greatly advanced provision in the ward, was compromised by allocation of the senior school site for the Central girls’ school.  However, this school, when eventually built in 1931 did contain more capacity than originally intended, in order to accommodate the girls from the Central as well as those from Camp and Fleetville.  However, since a senior boys' school was not part of the immediate plan, Fleetville continued to provide for them, as well as Hatfield Road boys’ near St Peter’s Street, until Beaumonts’ and the boys’ grammar schools were built in 1938.

The new Central senior school site also included a separate block as a boys’ craft centre.  

A section of the school population with staff taken in 1931 when Central
Girls' School opened in Fleetville.

The school had not been on this site for more than seven years when the buildings were modified and re-opened as the St Albans Girls’ Modern school – by the time it opened it had already been renamed St Albans Grammar School for Girls, so becoming a secondary school.  As part of the improvements an extension was built and the craft block integrated with the main school.  The school was one of the first to have a caretaker’s house built under the many standards for secondary schools which the county adopted.  The house was built on a strip of newly acquired land which also acted as a wider and more welcoming entrance than the narrow way next to West and Sellick.

 

The caretaker's house added in 1938.  The new entrance was much more
imposing than the rather utilitarian gateway of today.  A detached house
set on a wide plot is now replaced by Grimsdyke Lodge, built right up to
the boundary fence.

Next time it will be the turn of the senior boys.