[The demolition of the original 1928 Ellis School, part of the Ellis Guilford Comprehensive School on Bar Lane, where the author spent twenty years endeavouring to teach mathematics triggered off this article]
In 1924 A.H. ‘Henry’ Whipple (1870-1958) was appointed Nottingham’s first Director of Education. He had held a similar post with Blackburn since 1908, so he brought experience and more importantly for a City that was ‘about to stake its claim to rank among the Country’s outstanding education authorities’; he brought a wealth of fresh ideas about the education of children, particularly those over the age of 11 years.
He was emphatic however that ‘reorganisation meant a great deal more than the mere transfer of boys and girls at 11 years of age to Senior or Central Schools. It involved changes in all departments of all Schools in their staffing, equipment, curricula and in the method of teaching.’
He soon started his programme of re-organisation of the City’s education system by dividing the schools into three classes: Infant (up to 7 or 8 years), Junior (with boys or girls from 7 or 8 to 11 years) and Senior or Central Schools with boys or girls from 11 years of age upwards); and the city into 16 districts each with its hierarchy of this threefold division. Numbers in classes were to be reduced in the Junior and Infant Schools to 50 and in the Senior Schools to 40, information that today might raise eyebrows and force a wry smile!
One of his major tasks was to sort out the City’s aging Victorian schools; some went whilst the remainder were adapted for the new requirements. As Whipple put it ‘In many of the older schools, which must still be used, large French windows or casement windows have been made, so as to provide more light and air and to make the schools really homelike, and less like disused prisons’.
During the reorganisation, most of which was achieved between 1924 and 1933, 25 existing schools with accommodation for 5,000 pupils plus six special schools were closed. In their place 22 schools with accommodation for 9,500 pupils were erected. Only eight senior schools, and one secondary (girls’ grammar) school were in new buildings. As far as possible the new schools were to be erected within the new Housing Estates which were largely planned by the City’s Housing architect, T. Cecil Howitt.
Whipple had firm ideas about school buildings. They should be light and well ventilated and located if possible away from street clamour. As Whipple expressed it ‘The predominant feature is the idea of natural beauty, space and surrounding peace.’
The architect of the new schools, designed to incorporate Whipple’s educational ideals was initially the City Engineer from 1922-1935, Thomas Wallis Gordon. However the last of the ‘Whipple style’ family of schools, the Player Schools in Bilborough, which opened in stages 1938-40, were designed by Gordon’s successor, Robert Manfield Finch.
Whipple was particularly concerned about the education of pupils from the age of 11 upwards. He wanted the sexes separated, especially so that the curriculum for girls would not be excessively influenced by that prescribed for boys, as had often happened earlier. All senior schools would be non-selective for in the past boys’ education had been affected by the requirements of the Universities and their Examining Boards.
Thus every Senior Schools would be equipped as far as possible to provide a good general education, including provision for instruction in Science, Art and Crafts, Handicraft, Physical Culture, Gardening and Domestic Subjects. In an era when the school leaving age was 14, Whipple hoped by fitting out the senior schools with these specialist rooms he might achieve a fair degree of success in persuading pupils to stay on until at least their 15th birthday. Up to 1921 numbers of Nottingham children left school between the ages of 13 and 14 but under the Education Act of 1918 they had to remain at school until the end of the term in which their fourteenth birthday occurred. Each of these Senior Schools could accommodate between 320 and 560 pupils so there was built in provision for ‘staying on.’
These ‘Whipple’ schools were single storey with the rooms and open corridors arranged around an inner, grassed quadrangle. The classrooms faced south and had large French windows.
The senior schools in their design and their broad curriculum gained a national reputation for excellence. So how have these innovative senior schools fared in the last half-century? In many ways, after allowing for the increase in the school leaving age, Whipple’s Senior Schools were the forerunners for the City’s system of Bilateral Schools so successful in the 1960s.
The first of the new estate schools were the Ellis Boys’ and Guilford Girls’ schools adjoining the Stockhill Estate in Basford. Their completion must have had some national significance for they were officially opened on 5 March 1929 by the Minister of Education, the Rt. Hon. Lord Eustace Percy, accompanied by the leading City dignitaries. The architect presented the keys to the Minister for the symbolic opening ceremony. For long these schools although sharing the same site were fiercely independent. However in 1967 the two schools, both by now designated bilateral schools, combined. About this time a new typical ‘sixties’ block was erected to relieve overcrowding.
In 1974 Ellis Guilford, like all of the City’s 11-16 state secondary schools, was designated a comprehensive school. Earlier this year the single storey Ellis building, a key part of Ellis Guilford Comprehensive School, was demolished and replaced by a three storey block whose design was largely influenced by intensive consultation with the students. When funds become available the Guilford building will be demolished and replaced.
The Cottesmore Boys’ and Girls’ Schools, serving the Lenton
Boulevard area were opened in 1932. These schools, by now a mixed comprehensive,
closed in 1983 and reformed on the same site as Sandfield Comprehensive. Falling
numbers forced the closure of this school in the summer of 1992 and the buildings,
now the ‘Sandfield Centre’ house the City’s Education Department.
It perhaps worth noting here that Henry Whipple was a strong advocate for
the education of women. When girls from the old Clarendon Street Girls’
School transferred to the new Cottesmore Girls’ School he immediately
offered the vacated school to Dorothy Moore, founder of the ‘Advanced
Club’ an extended education opportunity for girls, then meeting in the
Ilkeston Road Council School, (Douglas Primary School). After some deliberation,
Miss Moore accepted and thus Clarendon College, of New College Nottingham,
was set up and became a full time educational establishment from January 1932.
The ‘wheel-like’ Aspley Estate had the William Crane Schools at
the hub. This was the largest of the new generation of schools, erected to
serve a new housing estate of over 4,000 houses. Started in 1931 the schools
were formally opened on 16 October 1933 by the Archbishop of York, the Rt.
Hon and Most Reverend W. Temple D.D. Part of his inspirational address is
worth recalling. “As a rule, housing estates reveal a total lack of
social cohesion. In this school is contained the idea of building the communal
life around the natural centre, the school. Here we have a really beautiful
building, laid out in a way which conduces to the utmost possible degree to
the healthy development of those educated there, so that the mind and the
spirit, along with the body, might go forward to effective service for the
common good.”
From the outset the William Crane Schools were planned for the dual purpose
of providing for the educational needs of children, adolescents and adults,
and acting as a social centre for the inhabitants of the Aspley Housing Estate.
The schools had total accommodation for 3,000 pupils in two infants’,
junior boys’, junior girls’, senior boys’ and senior girls’
schools. Between each infant and junior school there was a large hall capable
of seating 1,000 people.
In the 1970s the senior schools combined to form William Crane Comprehensive
School. Then demographic changes and aging took its toll and the comprehensive
closed on 18 July 2003; through as the Evening Post put it ‘failing
student numbers, bad exam results and the state of the buildings.’ It
is now partly demolished.
On the Sherwood Housing Estate the Haywood Senior Girls’ School opened in 1930. In September 1959 Haywood moved into a larger site on Edwards Lane. After a spell as an annexe for Claremont Boys’ School the buildings were taken over by the adjoining Seely Primary School itself an early Whipple school of 1925.
In similar fashion when the Pierrepont Senior Girls’ School of 1933 later combined with Manvers Senior Boys’ School, the empty buildings were taken over by Blue Bell Hill Junior School The last Whipple family of schools, the Player Schools at Bilborough, opened in 1940 and closed a number of years ago. They now form the Denewood Centre, part Social Services, part ‘Referral Unit’ and part Education Office.
Whipple’s only secondary (grammar) school was the Manning Secondary Girls’ School, on Gregory Boulevard, which opened in April 1931. It was formed to take the girls from High Pavement School, thus giving extra space for the boys in the short term and perhaps leading to a new High Pavement Boys’ School in the long term. In 1983 after the Manning School moved out to Aspley, a new school, Forest Comprehensive, was created in the old building drawing its pupils initially from Claremont Boys’ School. It was closed in 2003 through falling numbers and poor examination results and has recently been demolished. A new school on the site by the eminent architectural practice Norman Foster Associates is nearing completion and will form the Lower School of the Djanogly City Academy.
So of the nine Whipple post 11+ schools only one, Guilford, retains its original use and that is intended to be short lived. The Henry Whipple Primary Schools on the Bestwood Estate solely keep alive the name of this Nottingham educational pioneer.
Henry Whipple retired in 1938. At a meeting of the Education Committee on 21 September 1938 he was presented with an ‘inscribed wristlet watch as a mark of their esteem and of their appreciation of the valuable services he had rendered as Director of Education for the City since 1924.’ In the following year his distilled wisdom was published as Education up to 15 Years. There were of course numerous references to Nottingham in the text.
A number of the older Victorian schools survive, outliving the more recent Whipple schools, and are still in service as educational establishments. A full survey must wait for another day. For the moment two examples will suffice. The Carrington Board School of 1884 designed by T.C. Hine & Son is now part of Claremont Primary School; whilst Nottingham’s first Board School, of 1874 by the architects Evans & Jolley, in Bath Street is now after extensive renovation, the Bath Street Centre of New College Nottingham.
Ken Brand
January 2005
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