A Better Entrance

This week we pause to consider a few of the issues which come about when a site is purchased and a note on a planning map: "future school", or in the case of Hatfield Road "future schools".

Whether primary or secondary there was a huge difference between what was provided in an educational building. In today's terms the facilities to be found in the pre 1902 Board schools or the later elementary establishments can be considered very basic , where even effective winter heating might be absent.  The County Council, on its formation, became responsible for building and maintaining schools where they were needed.  In the early years after formation in 1889 the Council engaged an architect for each individual school, but in the 20th century it set up an increasingly sophisticated architect department to develop standards common to groups of schools; and these standards developed and improved with time.

The Rural School Board were responsible for creating a school for the widely-spread child
population in surrounding hamlets.

So, using just a few select examples, what did we discover from actual experience?

You would have thought a mains water supply was a basic requirement, but Camp Elementary School was opened without a water supply extended this far from the nearest supply; and in Sandridge senior boys were detailed to carry water buckets from the village pump when required.

In 1908 (Fleetville Elementary School) lavatories were strictly outside at the far end of the playground; and the playground surface was gritted.

When the land was purchased for senior education in Fleetville the space was deemed sufficient for one boys' and one girls' school.  Ten years later when the girls Central School was built only one school could be accommodated.

The County Architect Department developed a building style with interchangeable components
This style of building is widely distributed across the county.  Staff at Beaumont Boys' School
in 1959.

By 1938 when the two senior schools were required even more urgently, Beaumont got its pupils in one building, girls upstairs and boys on the ground floor, with the absolute minimum of sharing!  Playing field space, according to the government, was required to be even greater.  The site reserved for a girls' grammar school in Brampton Road was instead used for a boys' school, while new housing hemmed the school in on all sides.  The regulations required more playing field acreage for boys than for girls; which is why the pupils of the Boys' Grammar School (now Verulam) have, since 1938, walked to their remote site in Sandpit Lane, and continue to do so.

A hall was multi-purpose in the early days, with a requirement to divide into two classrooms, even in the 1920s (London Colney).  It must also double up as a gymnasium in 1930 (Central).  Even Beaumont (1938) was in build when the next advance came, and a separate gymnasium with changing rooms became a new requirement.  This facility was also added to Central later.

When Beaumonts Girls' and Boys' Schools were designed a gymnasium what not required 
separate from the hall.  This new requirement was added as the schools were nearing completion.
Changing rooms were included.  When more modern sports hall facilities were later built the 
gymnasium was converted into a library centre.

From 1930 a platform suitable for drama was added to the hall at Central, and at Townsend an adjacent room was included for teaching and changing purposes, and by 1938 (Beaumont) two small classrooms were added for changing rooms.  Similar improvements were made for staff facilities and administration.  And considering many school still closed at lunchtimes down to the 1920s, catering facilities weren't added until post-war with many schools being supplied from central kitchens elsewhere in the city.

A detached house was included when required for the caretaker and his/her family.  This is at the Fleetville Juniors site, formerly Central, Girls' Grammar, Beaumont Girls, Sandfield; all names
applied to schools occupying the Hatfield Road school site since 1931.  The house no longer
serves its original function.

When schools might be built further away from the urban area and where caretakers need to be close at hand, the authority either acquired a nearby house or had one built in a part of the site.  This added provision was in place by the mid 1930s (Central – detached house), Marshalswick  (bungalow in 1959) and St Albans College (flat in 1959).

The main entrances to schools were also given a more prominent statement where possible.  Central was added in 1937 when the caretaker's house was built.  The need for parking, visitors, staff and other vehicular pressures often limited the possibilities, and Beaumont was only significantly improved within the last two or three years.

Camp and Fleetville schools have had to squeeze more onto their fixed plots even, in Camp's case the removal of a former head teacher's house, and in both cases removal of part of the schools' infrastructure onto new sites (Fleetville Juniors across the road onto Central,  overcrowding of Camp to form Windermere, and overcrowding of Fleetville to form Fleetville Extension School, renamed Oakwood).

The School House

Many of us are familiar with post-war secondary schools which were built with a house or bungalow for the caretaker of the establishment.  In an earlier era it was deemed appropriate to provide a house for the head teacher in a few circumstances, and  we might use the example of St Peter's Rural Elementary School, which became known as Camp School soon after opening in 1898.

However, Fleetville Schools, nor any others in the city that can be discovered, were built without a head teacher's house.  So the clue may be in the original title of Camp School: St Peter Rural.  While there were plans for new housing nearby, the nearest existing homes were cottages at Camp Hill.  Further away were recently built homes at what we know as The Crown.  But most of the early children came from hamlets such as Tyttenhanger Green, and isolated farm cottages in the countryside.  Children attending the new school would, of course, have walked; but a school could not open if a head teacher (and his wife, to take charge of the Infant department) could not be appointed.  To minimise this risk in an area devoid of appropriate housing, the Education Board added a house on the site.

The 1912 map with the school house on the right, directly
opposite Royston Road.

The first Ordnance Survey map which shows the school house was the 1898 revision in 1912.  On this restricted triangular site the main building housed the junior and infants departments, with the senior department separated on the western boundary.  The separate building on the east side was the school house.  Behind it in the 1930s a portable building, informally named The Bungalow, was built and the last head teacher to live in the house may have been Mr Hill.  Certainly it was empty during the tenure of Mr Belcher who, having come from Fleetville School, had been used to his own family home in Beechwood Avenue.  In fact, the school house had been empty and unmaintained for around two decades until being demolished in 1972 to provide space for the new Nursery.

The architect's drawing from 1898 shows the front elevation of the school, but not the school house.  A good quality photograph from 1914 also excludes the school house, probably because the space between the house and the school was a relatively wide area used as a playground for the girls and infant children.

I have not yet discovered a photograph of the school house, but a tantalising glimpse of its design, appears to coordinate with the school; it is in the recently discovered picture of a 1930 class with a corner of the house on the right edge of the image.  Compare that with other class photos taken in front of the main building in which the entrance porch is a key architectural element.

c1930 class showing a small part of the school house on the right.

So – and not for the first time on this site – the call goes out for photographs of the Camp School head teacher's house.  Since it was designed by the same architect as the school itself, and built at the same time as the school under the same contract, it is inevitable that  one front elevation will have been reflected in the other.

It's All in a Bag

This year's Larks in the Park on Fleetville Rec attracted the usual friendly crowd of visitors; locals in the main, although it included  many families from across the city.  To greet them were the usual collection of stalls, entertainments and stands representing such charitable organisations such as Highfield Park Trust.  And the bold new marquee charting the latest progress of the proposed new Community Centre building.

Relevant to this story was the bric-a-brac stall, the place where you hope to sell items of a miscellaneous nature, and perhaps pick up treats for a grandchild or two.  Standing on the ground was one of those very ordinary bags you might use to carry a small amount of shopping home from the supermarket or greengrocer.  One visitor carefully investigated its contents and pulled out – a photograph!

A large school photograph, mounted, but without any information of any kind either on the front or back.   Our visitor knew exactly where this picture belonged and walked over to the Fleetville Diaries stand with it.  Apologies to anyone else also at the stand who, at that moment, felt rather left out, but the arrival of the image was rather exciting, as you may gather from the version shown below.

It had been taken at Camp Elementary School around 1930, as evidenced by the back rows who were clearly senior pupils; in fact the whole class of 42 pupils are probably eleven years or over. The school lost its seniors to Priory Park and Hatfield Road schools to enable Camp to become a JMI school.  Mr E Richmond, who lived in Windermere Avenue, was its teacher; he is seen in Camp School  football team photos of the time.  As to where the class was arranged, it certainly wouldn't be possible today.  The space was part of the playground between  the headmaster's house (right) and the main school building; Royston Road is behind.  Today waste bins, parked cars and a modern building occupy the space where the house once stood.

A senior class at Camp Elementary School c1930.

But where has this photograph – still in very good condition – been since the fresh faces lined up c1930?  Not every family would have been able to purchase a copy, or even would have wanted to.  Maybe it was stored in the home of a former member of staff.  If not, it probably spent most of its lifetime in the successive homes of one member of the class shown, though interestingly there is no pencilled circle or extra finger marks around any of the faces shown as is often the case!  To make identification even more difficult – and this is a common issue – no names or dates have been written on the reverse.

Questions therefore remain: who were these children of Camp district, who would today be between 100 and 105 years old.  How did the photo in a bag reach Fleetville Rec in June 2019?  Was it the result of a house clearance, or younger family members having a sort out?  The story of this class photograph remains largely hidden from us throughout the past ninety years.

But if you have information to add please get in touch: the email address is saoee@me.com

And if you would like similar photographs to reach a safe and permanent home – even if it is only a copy of the original – then do use the same email address.  Far too many historically important images of life in our city are being lost because their guardians just don't know what to do with them.

Educating the Newcomers

Work is now well advanced on recreating and improving the website St Albans' Own East End; delivering it on a new, more modern, platform.  There are many limitations to the present website platform, the most important that it is no longer being serviced.  So, as they say, the time has come ...  and we will hopefully see the new site in all its east end splendour later in the summer.

One small new feature on the collection of photo pages devoted to the schools will be a brief history of each one.  We take them for granted, but they came into existence for many different reasons.  Yes, each one opened to provide more places for children living in the district, but the more we explore how their beginnings the more we understand how flimsy was the planning in each case, and how little the various education authorities took account of the data which was available to them.

Today, of course, there is so much data available – and even more can be commissioned by virtually anyone and for any purpose. Even basic facts and numbers available to authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as census returns and movement of households into districts, did not appear to convince planners that crunching this limited information could possibly assist in making provision for school places.

For example,  from the 1890s almost thousands of homes were emerging from the fields on both sides of Hatfield Road and for a decade the education authority chose not to commit itself to building a school in the district; not even to negotiate with the developers to reserve a plot of land on which a future school might be built.

Shortly before the emergence of county authorities the St Albans Rural Education Board constructed a school, Camp, specifically for children living in the villages and hamlets on the east side of the city.  This  became urgent because the St Albans (city) Education Board had reviewed its existing policy and denied future access by rural children to city schools, mainly Alma Road, St Peter's and Priory Park, and Hatfield Road.  

Children in all of the homes in the Cavendish, Fleetville and Castle areas were expected to attend Camp School.  It wasn't only a question of numbers either.  A child living in Brampton Road had no straight-line access to Camp School as the only rights of way across the railway line were in Sutton Road and Camp Road.

The first part of Fleetville School opened in 1908, although strangely, the authority had no expectation that many children would attend on the first day, only employing the head teacher and deputy until proof could be shown!  Between them, Camp and Fleetville carried the burden of education the east end's children – all of them up to leaving age – until the opening of Ss Alban & Stephen in 1934.  The removal of senior children into senior schools at Hatfield Road, Priory Park and, eventually Beaumont, occurred from 1930, and relieved some pressure on space. Incredibly, it was not until 1955 and 1958 respectively that new schools were opened at Windermere and Oakwood, the latter being known at the planning stage as the Fleetville Extension School.

We now have nine (10 if Samuel Ryder is included) centres educating primary-aged children, and during the post-war period the education authority was finally able to do what the 1944 Education Act envisioned: to enable primary children to attend a local school within a short walking distance of their homes.  Of course, the open enrolment concept of recent years has partly negated that aspiration, with many children being ferried by car to a school further away on the basis that it is a good school.  Yes, there's a debate to be had here.  Good schools everywhere, more open air and exercise for all, fewer cars, less stress around the school gates, cleaner air ...

Next time we will discover how bad it became for children over the age of eleven.