Coates School, 1873 to 1968

Now an attractive green in front of St Mary’s Church in Ponteland, for almost 100 years until its demolition in 1968, this was the site of Ponteland’s village school – Coates School.

The school was named after its benefactor Richard Coates, a Newcastle Merchant whose legacy paid for the original village school which was across the road in the building which has now been adapted as the Estate Agents office.

In 1870’s schools came under the supervision of local authorities and for the first time introduced compulsory education. This led to a big increase in pupil numbers and necessitated the building of new schools. By this time, the original school had just under 100 pupils and was totally inadequate. The governors and the Church of England who were in charge of the school built a new school on what was then a small park in front of the church, which earlier had housed the medieval tithe barn for the village. There were also some small cottages on the site which had to be re-sited.

The main room of the school where most of the teaching took place was about 60 feet long (18 metres) and without partitions until 1923. In this room could be anything up to five classes at various stages of work simultaneously taking place. In 1907, 123 pupils out of a total at the school of 222 pupils were being taught in this single classroom. Discipline was strict with caning and being forced to stand on a bench for up to two hours being common place.

The school seems to have been overcrowded from almost as soon as it was built. This was aggravated with the opening of the Cottage Homes on the outskirts of the village in 1903. This was a residential children’s home for at risk children from the Newcastle area. The older children accommodated at the home attended this school raising pupil numbers to 240 at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. This sparked some early discussions about replacing the school but the war and the subsequent Depression and Second World War meant that this never happened. Long after electricity had come to Ponteland, the school was still lit by oil lamps.

There were two separate playgrounds with boys and girls being segregated. These were just bare earth with ashes spread on the ground after it had been raining to try and stop it getting too muddy. The toilets were dry closets until 1923 when the school was connected to the water mains.

Overcrowding was alleviated in 1932 when the school was restricted to being an infants and junior school with the older children attending the Council School in the village but with the growth of the village in the 1950’s, the situation again deteriorated. At one stage the headmaster, Mr Parker had his desk in the corridor of the old building and additional pupils were accommodated in two prefab buildings in the school grounds.

Finally in 1960 a third Coates Endowed School was built on Thornhill Road and the school here was demolished in 1968.