Modern Thinking

 We left the previous post with the prospect of a new style of school to strengthen the curriculum range for over eleven year olds.  Until the mid thirties secondary schools, as distinct from senior elementary establishments, were outside of the then state system, but children who were eligible through achieving minimum levels in scholarship examinations would have the fees these schools charged paid on parents' behalf by the local authority. However, St Albans School and High School for Girls were severely limited by the total number of places available.

A full page feature in the Herts Advertiser showed off architecture and facilities of the new
Boys' Modern School, and (below) a gymnastics class in progress.
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The first drama production at the end of the first term, Christmas 1938.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

In 1936, therefore, the authority took forward two new Modern designated schools, both of which were located in the East End of the city.  The girls Modern school was proposed for a modest site between Brampton Road and Jennings Road; a larger site was not possible because house building was already in progress.  A saving in the cost of a boys' Modern school would be possible by creating it out of the existing Central School in Hatfield Road.  This proposal was only the third or fourth option; the authority had already purchased land in the west for a future senior school in Sandridgebury Lane and a technical school in High Oaks.  Both of these were considered but for various reasons discounted.  Modifications to the Central building was significantly cheaper and therefore more attractive to the authority.  Then it was suggested that further money could be saved by locating the Girls' Modern at the Central site because it was already a girls' school, and making Brampton Road the boys' site.  On the face of it a neat solution.

Making this a final decision did, however, create a permanent problem as the Brampton Road site only had sufficient outdoor space for girls (the regulations required more space to be provided where boys are educated).  And so the site opposite the former Newgates Farm in Sandpit Lane, which had been purchased for a new senior school to serve the future Marshalswick development, became the games space for the boys' Modern school.  And so it still is.  The school got the space but the authority did not extend the funding to meet the cost of changing accommodation.

Naturally, of the two new Modern schools, which both opened in 1938, most of the publicity went to the boys' school, because they were impressive new buildings!  Plans were also carried forward for a mixed senior school at Sandridgebury Lane on the grounds that Townsend School was the only other post-eleven school in the west.  No, you won't find it there today as war intervened and the plan was dropped; yet another example of the ever complex programme of schools provision.  

St Albans Girls' Modern School began life in Hatfield Road in 1938.  This class is photographed
in 1952 shortly before its new life in post-war buildings in Sandridgebury Lane.
COURTESY JENNY BOLTON

The scene at Sandridgebury Lane as the girls arrived.
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The school, widely known now as STAGS), shows its buildings gently maturing.
COURTESY STAGS

In the bright new world of post-war Hertfordshire's educational future, one of the first new secondary schools opened in 1953 was for  St Albans Girls' Grammar School (renamed from Modern school under the 1944  Butler Education Act).  And where was this located?  At the site in Sandridgebury Lane!  Unusually the new buildings were thrown open for public viewing.  At the same time Beaumont Girls' School (first floor Oakwood Drive) were moved to the former Central site in Hatfield Road – which they should have occupied from the early 1920s if the original programme had kept to schedule.  

Hatfield Technical School
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The 1944 Education Act had delineated three types of secondary school, all of which became free of fees.  The Modern schools were renamed Grammar, the senior schools were confusingly named Secondary Moderns and a more limited group were Technical schools, of which there were no examples in St Albans, although two sites had been reserved in the city.  The nearest technicals were in Hatfield and Watford, and a number of St Albans eleven year olds were selected to travel to Hatfield Technical School.  I mentioned the transfer of Beaumont Girls Secondary Modern to Hatfield Road, but the name was changed to Sandfield Secondary Modern after a short while to avoid continued confusion of two sites with the same name.

Full teaching staff of Beaumont Boy's SM School in 1959 just before the school became a
secondary modern mixed school.

The girls having moved out in 1953/4 enabled Beaumont Boys' Secondary Modern to take over the whole building for a few years before becoming a mixed school in 1959.  Was this, at last, a settled period for schools?  Not really.  As the city's population continued to grow there was a serious need for another Grammar school, but by the end of the sixties, not only had there been more Secondary Modern Schools opened – most of them mixed – but the next "brilliant idea" from Government opened a debate more controversial than the one in the wake of 1944.  The story continues next week.

Educational Future

 While we can way find our way along Hatfield Road by means of the frontage shops, we now have a choice: the premises which line the south side of the road, and the occupier of the back land.  We have reached the next of the fields owned by the St Albans Grammar School.  Hertfordshire County Council planned a three-stage re-organisation of schools which had been a mix of board and elementary schools, which had themselves been borne from an earlier collection of British and National schools.  One desperately urgent need was to separate senior pupils from infants and juniors to provide senior schools and distinct Junior Mixed and Infant Schools.

In 1925 Fleetville and Camp districts possessed no schools for senior children of either gender, and the council agreed to purchase a site of less than five acres for a pair of senior schools.  Quite what it thought would fit on this acreage for two schools and its attendant playgrounds is debatable, quite apart from a playing field.

The 1924 map shows the cemetery and a large undeveloped space to its east.
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Timber yard – see previous post – and a number of shops and business to the west by the time the
1937 map was published.  Behind is the site of the Central and Senior Girls' School in its original
square building and the separate handicraft building.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

From around 1918 a central school for girls had been operating in a rather ramshackle set of buildings in Victoria Street – partly a former  library, an arts and technology centre, boys' handicraft rooms and a school for girls who would benefit from a full four-year curriculum not limited to the existing leaving age of thirteen.  Most of these spaces had to be shared and were not for the exclusive use of the school.  And as the number of qualifying girls increased the available space became crowded.

New premises was desperately needed for the school and for practical rooms which could be shared with elementary schools lacking in these facilities.  So, new central school buildings came to Hatfield Road, and a search for a new pair of senior schools for the eastern districts would continue (and was eventually found at Oakwood Drive in 1938).

A cooking lesson in one of the practical classrooms.
COURTESY JENNY BOLTON

The new Central and Senior Girls' School school had no need of a frontage to the main road and so was not included in the sale to the education authority.  One pedestrian entrance, still used as such, was created at the eastern end between a motor factor (then West & Sellick and now CAMRA), and a further entry at the western end, later improved for access to the ancillary buildings, parking and a caretaker's house.

A typical HCC architectural design from the 1930s, of expanded buildings at Hatfield Road.
COURTESY JENNY BOLTON

By 1938 the school was changed to become a secondary St Albans Girls' Grammar School, with attendant increases in accommodation and for an increase in places.  In 1951 a new site was built for STAGGS in Sandridgebury Lane, originally intended to become a boys' secondary modern school – the county council changed its mind several times during this period!

Original handicraft and pupil teacher buildings, now unused on the site.

Overcrowded Fleetville JMI school earnestly hoped the former girls' school buildings would be available for them, but the inadequate Beaumont schools, new in 1938, became a boy's secondary modern and its girls formed a new school in Hatfield Road, first as Beaumont Girls school, and then altering its name to Sandfield Girls to avoid the name Beaumont being used for two sites in different locations. All of this new accommodation was required for an increase in the leaving age to 15. Instead, Fleetville Overflow School was constructed in Oakwood Drive, being named Oakwood JMI School in 1958 when it opened.

Aerial view of the current school, playing field, ancillary buildings and the former Family Centre.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

Sandfield School later merged with Marshalswick Boys' School at The Ridgeway; and the parents of Fleetville JMI made a further attempt to move from their, by now, even more overcrowded Royal Road location.  This time they were more successful and the Junior department became custodians of the Hatfield Road buildings in 1975, enabling the infant department to spread out in Royal Road.

Fleetville Junior School is therefore the longest of the five occupiers of the buildings at forty-six years.  The first two occupiers would even have experienced the occasional passing of a train on the southern boundary!