Post World War Two period

After the Second World War problems started because, again, the school was too small. The Inspectors came. The school was using the Sunday school and the Conservative Club for classrooms. The children were now having dinner in school; this was one of the other things that ICI did, just after the war. A trial school meals service was set up. The meals were cooked in the ICI canteen and then distributed to schools across the town. During the war many men had enlisted and ICI was short of workers, so women were employed in the factory. If Mum was at work someone needed to provide lunch for the children, so the school meals service started, meals were taken out to schools in big metal tins. The ICI were helping the school, but it was still overcrowded, there wasn't enough room and the Inspectors weren't pleased again. In their report they say "the small hall is used for a dining room, they have to go to the Conservative Club for lunch, they have to go into the Sunday school to be taught, and it's not good. There is no football pitch." There were plenty of fields, but you couldn't play football at school. "But above all the children develop a good attitude towards work, they are well mannered and they are friendly. The school has strength in the habits of industry that have been fostered. If a well balanced, stimulating curriculum is to be provided they must give way to much greater weight on the creative arts".

A new School and a new Site

The school was too small, what were they to do? They needed a new school, but hadn't the funding for it. There was no way that the Church could provide a new school, so a little 'wheeze' was dreamt up. The actual school and the land belonged to the Weaver Navigation Company, so it was decided that the Weaver Navigation Company really did need that space for the work on the docks and that they were giving the school notice to quit. The school had to move, land had to be found and that's when land was designated off Castner Avenue, where the present school is. It was quite a 'fudge' really but the local authorities could then start to build a new school. The Inspectors noted that, not only did the school not have a football pitch, but they had all these wonderful fires that kept going out, the children were cold, and somebody had to collect the coal and tend to the fires. The Inspectors said that a new school should be built, which it duly was. It was opened by Dennis Vosper, the local MP, on 28th June 1963. A new school was built off Castner Avenue up on the field. This was before the expressway was built, and it had a football field. But what happened then? They put the new road in, so what has to go? The football field! The local authority decided that they would buy more land and put the football field above the school. There is a very high wall right around the playground and the school to retain the land. In fact the school has a perimeter fence of a mile, it's a heck of a large site. There is now a woodland area, lower down, near the expressway, but above it is the football pitch.

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