The Cottage Homes' Lost School House

Unfortunately, not all the old buildings dating back from the old Cottage Homes days have survived. One of the buildings which was destroyed was the site’s own schoolhouse which rather surprisingly had not been awarded “Listed Building” status, unlike the other buildings surviving from that time, and therefore had no official protection.

The main school building stood at the entrance to the estate now occupied by the first houses on the left.

Some of the sources state the school was built in 1913, when the homes were extended, but there is a detailed description of the building in a newspaper report published in 1903.

“On the left-hand side there is a large building, where the younger children with be educated by a staff of properly-trained and certified teachers. The building has a frontage of 74 feet, and consists of a hall 53 feet long and 30 feet wide, with raised platform at the north end, underneath which is the chamber for the heating of the building by hot water on the low-pressure system. At each side of the hall is a classroom 20 feet by 16 feet. The floors are of pitch pine.”

The exterior of the building matched the other buildings in the complex. It was an Arts and Crafts building, single storey, ornate mullioned windows and the ubiquitous faux-wooden timer framing of this period. A nice feature was the cupola shaped bell tower on the roof.

One of the main principles in the “Care-in-the-Community” ethos of the Cottage Homes when they were first built was that the children housed in the homes should be integrated with “normal” children as much as possible. This meant sending them to the local school. The nearest one was more than a mile away however and this was deemed too far for the smaller children to walk four time a day (there were no school dinners at this time and the children had to return to the Homes for their midday meals). The on-site school was designed for the 250 or so younger children who were under 10 years old.

As with most schools during this period, it also played the function of community hall for the Homes, where entertainments were provided.

It is not known what the old school house was used for during the site’s time as a teacher training college but during the time as the police headquarters, it was used as the gatehouse to the complex.

It was demolished in 2018.