|
| |
The
Schools on the Common
A
short history of
the Bromley Common Schools
and
Princes Plain Primary School
1837
to 2000
|
In
1837, the interiors of two cottages by the Westerham Turnpike (now
Oakley Road) were gutted and fitted out to make a long, narrow
classroom for the new Bromley Common Infant School. A third cottage was
refurbished as a home for Mrs Corfield, the teacher. The area of the
classroom was about the same as that of a modern classroom but, as the
average attendance ranged between 60 and 114, it must have been very crowded. |
|
|
The Parish Cottages (home of the Bromley Common
Infant School, 1837-1846) shortly
before they were demolished in 1894. For more details, click here.
|
|
The school was funded by the
penny a week that the pupils paid and the donations of some of the more
affluent local people: the government provided nothing. The main
expenses were the teacher’s pay (£30 rising to £40 a year) and
repairs to the building.
The school was popular but the building was
damp and dark. The vicar described it as 'merely two cottages thrown
into one and dilapidated.' A new school was needed.
By 1846, over £750 (including
£202 from the government) had been raised to open a new school next to
the new Holy Trinity church. It had two large classrooms, a two-bedroom
house for the teachers, and a gravel playground. Behind the house were
the toilets, the cesspit and the well.
|
|
The
new school as it would have looked in 1847. Initially, it was
referred to as two schools, the Infant School and the National School.
Together, they were the Bromley Common Schools. In the 1870s, they
became The Bromley Common National School. One classroom and the house
are still in use but not as a school.
|
|
In Victorian times, the school
was run by a committee of managers elected by the parishioners of Holy
Trinity. Their treasurer for many years was Mr George Warde Norman, the
local squire. He and his family were the major contributors to the
school’s funds, particularly in the first 30 years when very little
was provided by the government.
|
|
The population of Bromley
Common rose rapidly in the mid-1870s when the area round what is now
Chatterton Road became known as ‘The Building Field’. As the school
roll rose rapidly, the managers (and many other inhabitants of Bromley)
were worried that, if there were not enough places for all the new
children, they would have to accept a school board.
A new classroom was added to
the school and a temporary infant classroom erected in Pope Road, close
to the new housing development, but it was no use. Bromley elected a
school board in 1888 and the first board school was opened the following
year.
|
|
When our school first opened,
the children paid a penny a week for their education. This was the
school pence. Even when school attendance became compulsory in 1880,
they had to pay, but by then it was three pence a week, two pence for
infants. A year later, it was increased again. It was not until 1891
that education became free for the children of Bromley Common.
|
|
In
1900, the Bromley School Board was paying for 25 boys from the workhouse
at Locks Bottom to attend the school. Unfortunately, it was overcrowded
so the board threatened to send the boys to Farnborough School if a new
classroom
was not built. The managers opted for the cheapest option, an iron room, a wooden
framed building covered with corrugated iron.
This
plan of the school in 1900, shows the iron room with eleven benches,
each 9 feet long, for the 66 pupils that the room was designed for.
|
|
In 1904, the school changed its
name to Bromley Common (Church of England) School. This might suggest
that the church had increased power in the school but the reverse was
true; the school had become the responsibility of the Bromley Education
Committee. The managers and parishioners no longer had the increasingly
difficult task of raising the money to run the school; most of the costs were
now met by the rate payers of Bromley.
School dinners were first
served at Bromley Common in 1929 when the local authority put an oven in
the caretaker’s house (it had been the teacher’s house) and paid her
5/- a week to serve meals and supervise the children. This service
helped improve afternoon attendance but was only available in the
winter.
In the late 1920s, there was a rapid rise in the local population, the school was again
overcrowded and the older children were moved to the Raglan Road
Schools. This was an interim measure as two new schools were being
built. In 1933, the older girls moved into the Princes Plain Secondary
Girls School. Two years later, the younger children moved into Princes
Plain Primary School. (The vacated school became the Holy Trinity Church
Rooms.)
|
|
Despite the extra space, the
new school was very overcrowded (with average class sizes of 47 and
classes in the hall) until the Southborough Lane Schools were opened in
1937.
When war was declared in 1939,
the school closed because there were no air raid shelters. After a few
weeks, the older children were allowed to attend but only in groups of
less than sixty and only for fifty minutes a day. The infants were
taught in small groups at homes in the area so they could rush to their
own homes if there was an air raid.
It was six months before full-time
education was restored. Then came the blitz and daily trips to the air
raid trenches and shelters. (One shelter still stands in the
playground.)
|
|
A
V1 Flying Bomb, like the one that hit the school in 1944.
|
|
In June 1944, the school was
badly damaged by a V1 flying bomb. The children had to be moved to other
schools until temporary repairs could be made. They moved into the
less damaged part of the senior girls school later in the year and back into
their own school in 1946.
After the war, the roll again
rose and temporary classrooms had to be installed. However, in the 1980s, rolls fell, the
secondary school closed and the primary school moved into the vacated
premises.
Further change came in the 1990s when a special infant unit and a nursery class
were added to the facilities. |
|
