Chapter Seventeen

The Craufurd Street Buildings

The school buildings in Craufurd Street, originally School Road, presented difficulties right form the start. The design of one very large room for each department was based upon the assumption that one adult, supervising a number of older children who acted as monitors and taught younger children would do the teaching. This method of teaching was very soon to be considered outmoded and inadequate.

Dimensions of Old Swinford Schools: [taken from 1867 Log Books]

The Infant Schoolroom                             Height              32ft

                                                                Length                   37ft 6ins

                                                                Breadth  25ft

Boy’s Department                                    Classroom             18ft x 14ft              

                                                                Large Room           48ft x 18 1/2ft        

Girl’s Department                                    Classroom             18ft x 14ft              

                                                                Large Room           48ft x 18ft

The introduction of other adult Masters and Mistresses meant it was no longer necessary for the Head Teacher in each department to personally supervise everybody but it was difficult to find space and funding for major structural changes to the building. The Infants, who occupied the very large hall, were particularly badly affected. Additions were made to the buildings over the years but more than one class was taught in a room, in all of the departments, until well into the twentieth century.

The design of the school caused other problems. New heating ‘apparatus’ was installed in 1881, the pipes of which continued to be in use until the school buildings were closed in 1977 but there were frequent problems with this. The high ceilings rendered it difficult to heat the rooms and open fires continued in use into the mid twentieth century. The ornate windows often suffered from broken panes of glass. During the latter years of the buildings life dry rot was discovered in the roof timbers and the roof continually leaked.

The buildings were vacated in 1977 when the Infants transferred to Field lane but continued to stand empty and increasingly derelict for the next seven years. In 1979 their ownership was transferred to the Local Authority’s Housing Department with a view to the erection of flats for the elderly on the site. Even then the buildings were left as a haven for vandals, tramps and arsonists. Firemen had to pull up the floorboards of the main hall to prevent a fire from spreading. Eventually the building, which had stood for 125 years, was finally demolished and flats for the elderly were constructed in 1985.

The two School Houses, built originally for the Boys’ Master and the Girls’ Mistress and occupied in 1860, still stand on the corner of Corser Street and give us some idea of the style in which the original school building was built. They are now privately owned dwellings.

The provision of rent and free accommodation would have been a substantial benefit to the early Masters and Mistresses. Apart from the Masters themselves the houses often have also been family homes, sometimes occupied by extended families. The 1891 census, for example, shows that one of the houses was not only occupied by Miss Pearman but also by her widowed father and her sister, a dress maker. At the same time Mr. Sutton, the Boys’ Master, and his wife Elizabeth from Newcastle upon Tyne, her sister Ellen and the Sutton’s three infant sons, occupied the house next door.

In the 1920’s one of the houses could also boast that it was the residence of the Mayor of Stourbridge.

In the 1930’s the School no longer required the houses and they were let out, not necessarily to people connected with the school. During the 1940’s the March family resided in one of the houses. Elizabeth March [later Mrs. E. I. Tolley] attended the school and in 1976 joined the Teaching Staff, retiring in 1996.

The HMI report of May 1951 states that between 1921 and 1939 reports issued referred to the bad conditions of the premises. In 1925 three classes in the Boys’ Department had to share a room, without partition, and apparently similar conditions were happening in the Girls’ Department. Floors were reported as weak and, in general, conditions were extremely unsatisfactory. In 1951 little had been done to remedy the conditions indicated in the earlier surveys. At the time of the inspection three hundred and two Infant and Junior children, organised in seven classes all exceeded forty except for one class. The classroom space available was deemed inadequate – particularly where the Reception Class was concerned. The flooring of the main room [hall] was badly worn and the Inspector wrote that it was a matter of urgency that it was most desirable that steps should be taken without delay to find alternative accommodation. Rain came into three of the classrooms and the boys’ ‘closets’ flushing arrangements had broken down.

Last photograph taken of the old buildings before demolition [1983]