London Colney Secondary School (revised)

 

Revised copy with additional map, and text in italics 25 June.

Here is an unusual post because it features London Colney marginally outside of our East End.  And it refers to an event just a few years before the closure of the village's Secondary School.

Until the 1980s there were few secondary schools located in any of the county's villages.  In the south of the county there were three: Redbourn, Wheathampstead and London County; four if Kings Langley is included, but that school still thrives  Most of the other villages in the days of Elementary Schools lost their senior pupils to existing or new senior – later secondary – establishments in nearby towns.

Apart from the array of cars, this is what the building always looked like from the Alexander Road
entrance.  In the 1960s there were more staff bikes in the bike shed than staff cars at the kerbside.
COURTESY LONDON COLNEY BUSINESS CENTRE

A recently available map series from 1968 now provides a new step in the change to building arrangements at the school.  Further references to this map are added in italics to the original blog.

A newly published map from 1968 was not available when this blog was first published. It
confirms the gymnasium and changing rooms were in top right section, and the former ROSLA
temporary classroom building was in area B in the aerial photo below.  Are we correct in
suggesting a caretaker's house was within the long rectangle in the top left area of the map?
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

London Colney Secondary closed in 1984, although the buildings are still in use as a business centre.

We know that the senior school was built on its Alexander Road site in two phases shortly after 1928 and in about 1932.  The next building to arrive was c1946 in the form of a temporary two-classroom structure, to prepare for the school leaving age uplift from 14 to 15.  These structures were known as ROSLA classrooms (Raising Of School Leaving Age). The 1968 OS revision indicates this building was in location B in the aerial map below.

The next arrival was in c1962; a gymnasium and changing rooms, the former changing rooms adjacent to the assembly hall then being converted into a small library. The 1968 OS revision indicates the gymnasium and changing rooms were in location A but the rectangular building outline was perpendicular to the car park now on the right of A.  This car parking area was the tennis courts.

Alexander Road curves around the lower left corner, and Parham Way is laid out top-bottom near
the left edge.  The primary school is out of view on the left.  For those who recall the school, though perhaps not the current layout, will be able to identify the quadrangle or green space in the
centre of the existing classroom layout.
The letters may help readers to identify particular teaching areas they remember at the time
they may have attended the school.
COURTESY LONDON COLNEY BUSINESS CENTRE

Most villagers who are long-term residents will probably have recalled   a serious fire c1980 centred on the assembly hall.  The current aerial photograph (see above) reveals that the original pitched roof structure of the hall has been replaced by flat roofed accommodation, but is this the replacement hall or was it transformed into, perhaps, a dining room or teaching area?

Two other separate building extensions were completed in short order and formally opened by Gordon Beningfield in May 1981.

One was on the North-West side of the building and replaced the former small ROSLA building (though the school probably had a different name for it). Part of it looks as though it might have included a Welcome area and Administration, but the remainder of this substantial structure had another function or functions, whatever they might have been.

The remaining separate building was on the South-east side playground.  It was undoubtedly a specialist teaching building; perhaps science or technology.

One more building which does not appear on the aerial photograph: the gymnasium and changing rooms added to the school estate c1962.

The writer taught at the school in 1963-4 and is fairly certain the new gymnasium occupied a plot on the edge of the playing field and which now  appears to have become a demolished section of the site on the south side of Parham Way.  It does seem strange that this potentially useful community resource was not saved for further use. The demolished block is visible at the top of the aerial photograph.

Press photo taken in 1932 on completion of the second phase of building work, which
formed the complete school as it remained for the next nearly fifty years.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

Photographs of the school's buildings are also in short supply, and I would ask readers of this post who have any such examples to reply below.

In particular anyone who can add to, or correct, information given in this post is urged to get in touch.