Coates Institute: School to Estate Agent

There is a fine, old, sandstone building overlooking the roundabout at the beginning of Main Street which is now used as an estate agent’s office. There is an illegible plaque at the front which once told of its history:

"Ponteland School, endowed by Richard Coates, Esq. Anno Domini 1719, rebuilt 1831”

Richard Coates was a wealthy Newcastle Merchant or Shipwright who lived at Horton Grange. Shortly before his death at the age of 46, Richard ensured provision was made in his will to set up a trust to pay for the schooling of poor children in and around Ponteland, with funding coming from the rents paid on 11 houses and a smithy he owned in Newcastle.

The school opened around 1727 making it one of the very few schools which existed in Northumberland at that time. The building was originally only one storey high and Richard Coates legacy provided children in need, of both sexes, supplying them with free
boots - not shoes in those days - and coats for boys and manteaus or capes for girls, or alternatively the cloth with which to make them. These had to be grey in colour - an early example of a school uniform. Provision was made at first for about 15 pupils aged between around 7 to 11. But these numbers soon grew larger.

In 1831, the school was expanded with the building of a second floor. Over the following 150 years or so, the school on this site was rebuilt and altered several times to satisfy the growing need for additional accommodation but by 1870, there were almost 100 pupils in attendance and the site and the building was totally inadequate.

With the passing of the 1870 Education Act, Local Authorities became responsible for the overseeing of Education in this country and the decision was made to relocate the school on the opposite side of the road which lasted until its demolition in 1968.

In 1890 redundant school premises were adapted to become a library. The old school which had “barn-like appearance” were remodeled “beyond all recognition” and given a handsome stone front, with a gabled roof in the half-timbered style which was very fashionable and can be found in many of the buildings in Ponteland which were updated around this time. The architect of the adaptation was the leading Newcastle firm of Hicks and Charleswood.

The library was paid for by the governors of the original educational trust. As such admittance was limited to Ponteland parishioners and it was not available to the many cyclists who made Ponteland their destination on day trips, something which the Newcastle Daily Chronicle suggested should be considered. At its opening, the library held 300 books.

The library was eventually taken over by the County Council. The library moved upstairs and the downstairs was let to Glovers as an Estate Agents office.

During the Second World War, the side entrance was commandeered to provide a heavily sandbagged gun-emplacement guarding passage across the bridge, in case of an invasion.

The old building caused some problems, chief of which was a narrow, twisting staircase leading upstairs which sometimes had visitors queuing into the street. In 1965, the library moved into the new Thornhill Road complex.

For around about the last 40 years the building housed the estate agent’s Sanderson Young, more recently Brunton’s.