Into the New World

 In addition to the schools which have their roots in St Albans, other schools had made plans to join them during the post-war period.  These were a number of charity grammar schools whose historic home was in inner London and which chose to develop in greener pastures beyond the capital.  St Clement Danes, formed in 1862 near Aldwych moved to Chorleywood in 1975; Parmiter's (1681 Bethnel Green, Garston 1977) and Dame Alice Owen (1613, Islington, Potters Bar from 1973) have all continued as successful co-educational comprehensive schools in Hertfordshire.

Central Foundation Boys' School frontage in Islington.  The trustees had considered moving
the school to St Albans after the Second World War.

A name less well known to us are the Central Foundation schools (CFS) in Islington and Tower Hamlets.  Their trustees had agreed expansion plans, which inevitably included the urgent need to provide improved facilities, and to replace bomb damaged buildings. They began negotiations with Hertfordshire County Council  promptly after the end of the Second World War.  

Land comprising Cunningham Farm and Little Cell Barnes Farm came into the hands of the St Albans and Hertfordshire authorities for housing as the London Road and Mile House estates. Naturally, the education authority was anxious to reserve land early for future schools.  A site on the corner of Drakes Drive and London Road had been reserved for a secondary school, and was pencilled in for the new Central Foundation.  Given the footprint of the Drakes Drive site CFS initially planned its girls' school here and the boys would move to a site at Hatfield.  However, by the mid-fifties the schools' trusts altered their own plans and, as a result, today remain at their inner London locations.  

Hertfordshire's solution was to provide much needed grammar school places and built a mixed
grammar school, completed over two years late.  The view in 1963 across Drakes Drive of the
still unfinished Francis Bacon School.
COURTESY CHRIS NEIGHBOUR

Becoming a comprehensive school in the 1970s and an all-through school in the new millennium, Francis Bacon is now re-badged Samuel Ryder Academy.
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The benefit for Hertfordshire of London schools transferring to the Home Counties is the development capital they bring with them.  Meanwhile, Hertfordshire's increasingly desperate need for additional grammar places in St Albans forced a rapid advancement of Francis Bacon mixed grammar school in the building programme,  which was to be at the Drakes Drive site – the third such school to put down roots in our East End (although one, St Albans Girls' Grammar (STAGGS), subsequently moved to new buildings in Sandridgebury Lane in 1953.  The new Francis Bacon School (now named Samuel Ryder Academy) was created and opened long before buildings were ready in 1963; the first tranche of pupils and staff took tenancy at the former Alma Road buildings, temporary home to many schools which suffered delayed building programmes.

The location of former St Julian's Farm, Boys', Girls' and then Mixed Secondary Modern and 
Comprehensive schools all sported the name St Julian's School, before being renamed 
Marlborough Academy.
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Back in the mid-thirties several sites, including distant St Julian's Wood, were considered for a future senior school, although few thought St Albans would expand quite that far. By 1938 a location at St Julian's Farm had been selected with architect Percival C Blow nominated.  Even before serving the up-coming estates at St Stephen's, St Julian's, Sopwell and Cottonmill, children at the old buildings at Priory Park and St Peter's required new accommodation. War cancelled that project, but St Julian's Boys' School was finished in 1953 on the same footprint, although it opened as a mixed secondary modern, accepting children from Priory Park and Hatfield Road.  A second school for the girls was later added on an adjacent site.  The school, renamed Marlborough, was formally mixed in 1981.

The Sandpit Lane land intended for a new senior/secondary school for future Marshalswick, was instead commandeered for a Boys' Grammar School games field.  After the War the education authority sought and found a new site at The Ridgeway West, although it came with the disadvantage of being close to the Green Belt boundary.  A further limitation was the funding which, instead of a mixed school the new Marshalswick premises would appear in 1959 as a boys-only establishment, with the girls element appearing in future years.  Effectively, the Council produced half a school.  

Marshalswick School shortly after its opening.  The fencing across the upper part of the photo
marks the green belt boundary.  The Ridgeway West (as it was then known) crosses the lower
part of the picture.

Sandringham School as viewed today.  The same boundary is now a path and row of mature trees,
with the residential estate encroaching from the east and south-east.
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The seed-corn came from approximately half of the pupils of Beaumont, then boys only and growing quickly.  From 1959 Beaumont became mixed, as Beaumont Girls' School in Hatfield Road was also reaching capacity.

The other half of Marshalswick School was ongoing in 1972 with a year-by-year amalgamation with the renamed Beaumont Girls' (Sandfield School), which gave Marshalswick its mixed formula for the first time.  Hertfordshire's trial with small village secondaries appeared not to be sustainable.  Redbourn and Wheathampstead both had short lives; only London Colney had an extended lifespan, and will be the subject of a later blog.  The remainder of a depleting Wheathampstead, whose buildings were at Hilltop, where a teachers' professional centre would later set up camp, marked with Marshalswick under the new badge of Sandringham School, in 1981.

Townsend, a mixed C of E Secondary School on its High Oaks site.
COURTESY TOWNSEND SCHOOL

Finally this week we refer to two sites which had been earmarked for local authority use long before the Second World War; the first of which was referred to in an earlier blog and had been reserved for a senior technical school on the north side of St Albans.  As we might now expect, having read this series of blog posts, no technical school materialised, but the 1930s Townsend Boys' and Girls' Schools in Townsend Drive required new premises in the post-war era, partly to extend the range of facilities, but also to alleviate overcrowding as the school age population expanded.  The girls' school move to the ex-tech High Oaks site in 1963, allowing the boys to occupy the whole of the Townsend premises.  Extra accommodation at High Oaks was possible within the funding limits after a decade had passed and a newly merged Townsend School opened at High Oaks in 1974.

Nicholas Breakspear Catholic School, Colney Heath Lane.

Ss Alban & Stephen School was able to change from its elementary to primary status when, in 1955 St Michael's Catholic Secondary School opened in Garston.  Inevitably the number of additional places which were supplied by that school soon dried up, and the authority launched its plan for a new Catholic secondary school in the East End of the city, which opened in 1963.  The land in Colney Heath Lane had been purchased in the early years of the twentieth century for the purpose of a wing of Hill End Hospital, but by the time the land was actually required the site was deemed too small and Cell Barnes Hospital was developed and opened in 1933 on a larger site on part of today's Highfield Park.  The Colney Heath Lane land remained vacant until 1961 and Nicholas Breakspear mixed Catholic Secondary School opened in 1963.

It is about time we focused on a number of Primary schools which have been added to the local scene to manage the post-war baby boom.  Look forward to next week.