Elm Road
| H I N C H L E Y W O O D | ||||||||
| E | 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
C |
| S | 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
H |
| H | 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
E |
| E | 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
S |
| R | 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
S |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
N | |
| O X S H O T T | ||||||||
2024 Planning Applications
№ 14
| ADDRESS: Land adjacent to 14 Elm Road
|
ADDRESS: Land adjacent to 14 Elm Road
|
| ADDRESS: Land adjacent to 14 Elm Road
|
ADDRESS: Land adjacent to 14 Elm Road
|
Historical Notes
Elm Road School
| INTERESTING FACT
The last entry in the Corporal Punishment Book kept by Elm Road School is dated 17th December 1954. |
The site chosen by the Thames Ditton and Claygate School Board for the new school, not without some difficulty and controversy, was land adjacent to Elm Road, part of which was acquired from the Banks Settled Estates under a 90-year lease. The site cost £675 and the buildings £3,295. Facilities were provided for 111 boys, 111 girls and 85 infants, with residences for a master and two mistresses. The foundation stone, which can be seen on the south wall of the present school, was laid by Mrs Rowley Lambert on 24th October 1885, and the first children — 49 infants — moved into the new school on 28th June 1886. George Pack was the first headmaster, while Miss Maria Dawes was head of the girls' section, a position she occupied for some 40 years. Initially, Miss M.A. Lee was in charge of the infants' department. She was succeeded by Miss Louisa Foster in around 1895 who held that post for about 35 years.
For many years the three departments appeared to have maintained a fair measure of independence, at least as far as teaching and the curriculum were concerned. From the log books of the boys' section of the school, the following head teachers can be traced. It is probable that in these earlier years the head teacher of the boys' department was also responsible for the school as a whole, assisted by the heads of the girls' and infants' departments.
Head Teachers:
- 1886-1899 George Pack
- 1899-1924 Edward Stribling
- 1924-1927 Arthur Finch
- 1927-1928 Edward Jones
- 1928-1932 Henry Douglas
- 1932-1939 Frederick Betts
- 1939-1940 Spencer Jenkins
- 1940-1965 Miss F.H. Rayson
- 1965-1976 Mrs. N.M. Thompson
Excluding infants, the surviving register of admission records that Ellen Petter of Covers' Road—it was not called Coverts Road until 1933—was the first pupil to be admitted. She left in 1895 to be apprenticed as a dressmaker. These registers show that many pupils on leaving school went straight into local service. Various trades, dressmaking, and of course Claygate's brickfields, were other popular forms of employment in those days.
Punishment was common for misdemeanours such as disobedience, bad language, fighting and so on. It usually took the form of one or two strokes with a cane on the hand. Occasionally it was more severe and in 1927 one boy of ten received three strokes on the hand and three on the buttocks for 'deliberately tripping a small new boy who was not well'. The last entry in the corporal punishment book is dated 17th December 1954.
The School Board continued to run Elm Road School until 1903, when under the provisions of the 1902 Education Act, a Board of management was formed by Surrey County Council. From 1918 onwards the Burnham Committee established that teachers' salaries would be fixed on a national basis instead of by local education authorities.
For many years children as young as three years of age attended school, mainly to release their mothers to enable them to take local jobs. But by 1908 children under five were refused admission.
Over time various other Acts of Parliament gradually changed the education system. In 1940 Elm Road ceased to be an all-age school and thereafter children over the age of 11 years were sent to Hinchley Wood Central School, while the girls' and boys' departments at Elm Road became Claygate County Primary School. Some years later this was renamed Claygate County Junior Mixed School.
The school largely stayed open during World War Two, being forced to close only during the period from November 1940 to February 1941 after the central section of the school was hit by a bomb at 7.30 pm on Saturday 9th November. This section of the school was never restored to its former state. Even then the school lost only a few days education as the school resumed its activities on a temporary basis in the Church Hall on 21st November 1940.
The school buildings received further blast damage of a much more minor nature when a flying bomb exploded in Telegraph Lane on 29th June 1944, but this did not close the school. However, the intensity of this phase of the war did result in nearly 70 children, together with some of the teaching staff, being evacuated by their parents to Exeter in July 1944. It was not long before some of these children started to return to Claygate, and by the end of that year most of them had come back.
It should be noted that the school also played its small part in the overall war effort, when part of its facilities were utilised as a British Restaurant for the local population.
As school was not compulsory until 1903 in Surrey, there were no fixed starting or leaving ages. From 1940 pupils went to Hinchley Wood when they reached the age of 11. In 1973 a school was built in Foley Road to take the older primary children. In 1987 Elm Road School was closed and the children accommodated at Claygate Primary School.
Claygate Youth Club Association has leased the building from Surrey County Council since 1985.
