Board Schools

[RichardB]

Extract :

Sheffield has one of the best surviving collections of early board schools in England, unparalleled outside London. Following the 1870 Education Act, Sheffield’s newly elected School Board vigorously set about constructing new schools, completing 39 before its demise in 1903. Charles J. Innocent (1839-1901) was appointed architect to the Board and he, together with his partner, Thomas Brown (c. 1845-81) were responsible for 19 of the 22 schools built between 1873-1881. The first of them and, it was claimed by the architects, the first commenced under the 1870 Act, was Newhall School, Sanderson Street. By 1877, attendance at the new schools had reached 31,000.

When invited to open Park School in 1875, the Liberal MP David Chadwick remarked

"How in the name of fortune the School Board have persuaded the ratepayers of Sheffield to tolerate their extravagance in spending £100,000 in the building of 14 or 15 schools as substantial as so many castles!".

Newhall School, Sanderson Street (earliest)

Fulwood (1878)

Langsett Road (1879)

Woodside, Rutland Road (1880)

Burgoyne Road (1881)

Duchess Road (1883)

Huntsmans Gardens (1884)

Sharrow Lane (1887)

Abbeydale (1890)

Gleadless Road, Heeley (1892)

and Hunters Bar, Sharrow Vale Road (1893).

http://www.lookingatbuildings.org.uk/citie...rd-schools.html

http://www.lookingatbuildings.org.uk/citie...and-design.html

[DaveH]

OK, we have council run schools, church schools and now board schools.

What about the "ragged - arsed schools for waifs and strays" which I have mentioned previously in another thread.

I have a relative who claims that not only did it exist she actually went to it (somewhere Division Street area)

[Guest Gramps]

Dave, I think your relative will be a good age ? ... a potted history of Sheffield's Ragged School.

Sheffield's Ragged School was started in a building in 'Barley Fields' by the Revd John Manners, Principal of Sheffield's Wesley College in 1848. It removed to new premises in Baker's Yard, Peacroft in 1849 - originally Allen Street Sunday School.

St Vincent's School RC school was opened in the adjacent yard in 1855 and the success of this school shamed the trustees and supporters of the Ragged School into building a new school premises with much better facilities.

The school was destroyed by fire in 1869 but rebuilt and re-opened in 1873. By 1875 the school was so over-subscribed that imvestigations were made into the ability of several parents' ability to pay school fees and so many of them were found to be abusing the system that the school lost it's charitable status.

In 1876 the school was puchased by the School Board and renamed the Crofts Board School.

Source - Schooling the Poorer Child: Elementary Education in Sheffield 1560-1902, Malcolm Mercer

[DaveH]

Dave, I think your relative will be a good age ? ... a potted history of Sheffield's Ragged School.

Sheffield's Ragged School was started in a building in 'Barley Fields' by the Revd John Manners, Principal of Sheffield's Wesley College in 1848. It removed to new premises in Baker's Yard, Peacroft in 1849 - originally Allen Street Sunday School.

St Vincent's School RC school was opened in the adjacent yard in 1855 and the success of this school shamed the trustees and supporters of the Ragged School into building a new school premises with much better facilities.

The school was destroyed by fire in 1869 but rebuilt and re-opened in 1873. By 1875 the school was so over-subscribed that imvestigations were made into the ability of several parents' ability to pay school fees and so many of them were found to be abusing the system that the school lost it's charitable status.

In 1876 the school was puchased by the School Board and renamed the Crofts Board School.

Source - Schooling the Poorer Child: Elementary Education in Sheffield 1560-1902, Malcolm Mercer

Thanks for that Gramps, I think you have solved us a long standing family problem with this.

The relative in question (my mum) is in her late 70's but to be fair she did actually say that the school she went to USED to be called "the ragged arsed school for waifs and strays" without actually putting a date on when it USED to be called that. If you ask her what it WAS called when she was there she cannot actaually remember as the "ragged arsed" bit, not suprisingly, seems more firmly embedded in her memory. I assume that your post quoted above solves this for us as it looks like the very school and it is certainly in the right part of town.

As for the "waifs and strays" bit my mum moved to Sheffield when her father was killed in an accident in 1931. Previously the family had been travelling showmen (fairground people) touring Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire so I think that is why she was a "stray".

Both my parents seem to have had a poor deal out of schooling and education as their secondary school years coincided with the second world war and with evacuation, disruption to nomal services, rationing, teachers being called up to serve their country, bombing and blitzing and all the rest of it much of their education was missed.

As my late father once said to me when he was comparing his own education with mine and being very proud of the fact that I had gone to University and got a degree, - "Adolf Hitler ruined my education"

[RichardB]

My late Mother (born 1932) always maintained she attended 48 "Day" Schools, basically people's front rooms.

[RichardB]

Perfect Gramps, just perfect. Thank you.

[RichardB]

Rev. John MANNERS Principal of the Wesley Colege h. Edgerton House, Glossop Road White's 1849

Rev. John MANNERS Principal of Wesley College h. Edgerton House, Glossop Road Bar White's 1852

Rev. John MANNERS Head Master Wesley College, Glossop Road White's 1852

http://www.sheffieldrecordsonline.org.uk/

[DaveH]

My late Mother (born 1932) always maintained she attended 48 "Day" Schools, basically people's front rooms.

Sounds exactly the same as my dad (born 1929) Richard

He said that during the war he frequently went to "school" just for a morning or an afternoon in some old, brought out of retirement school mistresses front parlour in her house. This was done on some sort of "rota" so most the time he got no school at all "you can put a hundred kids in a school hall but only half a dozen in someones front room" and when he did get to go to one of these days schools "it never seemed to be in the same house twice"

Italics = quoting my fathers own words

[RichardB]

My Father (born 1920) of course "disappeared" in April 1939 into the Army and that was the end of his education/working life for seven years, wonder what happened there then ?

[DaveH]

My Father (born 1920) of course "disappeared" in April 1939 into the Army and that was the end of his education/working life for seven years, wonder what happened there then ?

Military service can be an education and a career in its own right.

I am sure that after the war, and this includes my dad, many young National Service "conscripts" learnt more in their 2 years service than they ever did at school.

[RichardB]

Military service can be an education and a career in its own right.

I am sure that after the war, and this includes my dad, many young National Service "conscripts" learnt more in their 2 years service than they ever did at school.

My Father, send to a farm on his return, learnt to get out of the way when feeding pigs, he only went and got his leg broken by a porker or two.

[DaveH]

My Father, send to a farm on his return, learnt to get out of the way when feeding pigs, he only went and got his leg broken by a porker or two.

His training taught him to get out of the way of bullets and enemy fire.

In comparison pigs are relatively harmless, - but they're still capable of doing you a lot of damage.

[RichardB]

His training taught him to get out of the way of bullets and enemy fire.

In comparison pigs are relatively harmless, - but they're still capable of doing you a lot of damage.

He still said he felt a pillock - run down by pigs because he was stood there with a bucket of swill.