One building ……. five views ......... and the story of a school

The time when this building was a school will all but have faded from living memory.

But I know a few who remember it as an overflow dining room for the new school on St Clements Road, and a few more who might just have been at the VE Day celebrations in the May of 1945.

More recently it was a workshop, design centre and an office, and back in the 1980s four of us considered it could be the venue for a restaurant.  

It was a two-pint ideas and if we had had the capitol we might just have prompted the Beech Road café revolution by almost a decade. *

But we didn’t and around 2012 a developer bought the place and converted it into residential accommodation.

I remember going round the building during the final fit out in the company of Emily Fisher who worked in the Horse and Jockey and knew the builder.  Emily was impressed by the conversion while my thoughts lingered on its time as a school.

It had opened in 1878 and was the third school on the site. The first had opened its doors in 1817 and was replaced by a second in 1847.

These were church schools and provided elementary education for the children of the poor. They were the product of the National Society which had begun in 1811 and aimed to establish a national school in every parish delivering a curriculum based on the teaching of the church.

The new school had been built with grants from the National Society and the Committee of Council on Education   on land given by George Lloyd in 1843 “for the purpose of a school for the education of poor children inhabiting the said township of Chorlton cum Hardy......and for the residence of the master of the said school for the time being, such schoolmaster to be a member of the Established Church, and the school to be conducted upon principles consistent with the doctrines of the Established Church” **

The 1847 school was a fine brick building which could hold three hundred children which was just as well because we had 186 children between the ages of 4 and 15.  Most were at school, a few were educated at home, and fifteen were already at work. 

The youngest at just ten was Catherine Kirby who was born in Ireland and worked as a house servant, the rest did a mix of jobs ranging from errand boys to farm worker and domestic service.  There were slightly more boys than girls and most were born here.

There may even have been more for when William Chesshyre interviewed their parents in the March of 1851 some children were described as farmer’s sons and daughters. 

They may have been at school or they may have already begun to work alongside their parents on the farm.    And as we shall see just because parents described their children as scholars was no guarantee they attended school or even if they did that they were there full time.

The national picture was one of children even younger than 10 being employed.  A labourer’s child could earn between 1s.6d and 2s. [7½p-10p] a week which was an important addition to an agricultural family’s income and in the words of one government report was “so great a relief to the parents as to render it almost hopeless that they can withstand the inducement and retain the child at school”***    

But in some cases this child labour would have been seasonal.   In one Devon school up to a third of boys over the age of seven were absent helping with the harvest, while in another school during the spring upwards of thirty were assisting their parents sow the potato crop and then dig it up in the summer.  

It was just part of the rural cycle and which one contributor to the Poor Law Commissioners on the employment of women and children in agriculture in 1843 said would at least teach children “the habit of industry,”   which fitted in with the belief much held in the countryside that “the business of a farm labourer cannot be thoroughly acquired if work be not commenced before eleven or twelve.” *** 

There is every possibility that with so many market gardens in the township some of our children would have been called into help when needed.

By the 1870s Chorlton was already on the cusp of change and beginning its rapid transformation from rural community to suburb of Manchester, which was accompanied by a steep rise in the population.

This in turn pre-empted a discussion on expanding the school and plans were drawn up to add another floor but this was shelved in favour of a brand new school on St Clements Road.

I have written extensively about the first two school both on the blog** and in The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, so I shall leave it at that, other than to say contained in those will be heaps of pictures.***

Location; Chorlton Green

Pictures; the former school on the green, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Measuring the quality of ideas by pints may seem daft, but sitting in the pub we could always be confident that and an idea that arose during one or two pints would work, while a three-pint idea might if the wind was in the right direction.  After that the workability of an idea deteriorated.

**Ellwood, Thomas, Chapter 13, National School, History of Chorlton-cum- Hardy, South Manchester Gazette, January 23rd 1886

***Evidence of Mr Austin on Wiltshire schools , Reports of the Special Assistant Poor Law Commissioners on the employment of women & children in agriculture 1843 

 **** Ibid, the 1851 Census of Great Britain on Education 

***** In our village school on the green in the spring of 1847, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/03/in-our-village-school-on-green-in.html

******Simpson, Andrew, The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2012,  https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton