Opened in 1889
Originally Park Street Infants school, but latterly known as Queens Park Junior School, this was opened on 8 November 1889. It replaced the older school in Eastern Road, built in 1826, which was under the auspices of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Together with the adjoining Senior School, it was built and fitted at a total cost of £11,300.
Do you remember this building? Share your memories, and leave a comment below.
Demolished in 1987
As some illustration of the density of population in what was then a rather poor area, the accommodation was for 798 children. The building did not quite attain its centenary, being demolished in July 1987. The area was added to the the Queen’s Park Senior School playground.
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It is sad to see this old building and to think it has gone. Gosh, my infants school gone, my primary school St Mary’s and the Church I attended which was All Souls in Eastern Road. Progress? There seems still to be a primary and infants school in Park Street.
Yes, I remember it well as my mother was once the School Secretary there from approximately 1960-1965. It had a small nursery in a corner classroom and all the reception children had a small cot, just a few inches above the floor and they all had an afternoon sleep! I also remember there being an air-raid shelter in the playground, built of brick and concrete accessed by a small flight of stairs so it was 4-5 feet below the level of the playground. Normally it was kept securely padlocked but on one occasion the school keeper let me have a look inside, dark and damp with benches down each side. It could probably hold 20 children or so. My sister attended the adjacent Queens Park Secondary School.
I left Queens Park school in 1970 at just 15 years and 6 months to start work. I remember the school Headmaster Mr Tibble, also Mr Moody, Mr Metcalf, Mr Krum. I also remember the cookery class and the prefab classes situated in the playground. The Headmaster’s office overlooked the senior playground.
I went to Park Street school in the late 50s and then we moved, is there anyone out there that might remember me? I know it’s a lot to ask.
My nan and her sister went to this school in 1914 (I believe it was called Park Street school back then) when their own school was taken over as a military hospital and she wrote some memoirs for me describing her favourite annual events. There was the Rose Festival in June when she was the Maid of Honour, strewing rose petals before the Rose Queen and another year she was a page boy dressed in green tights and a jacket. In May they had a maypole which they danced round with coloured streamers dressed in pink frocks. The boys had white linen hats and green suits and they sang “Sweet Lass on Richmond Hill” and “There was a Lover and his Lass”. She said they were happy days.
I remember Mrs Crockatt! A kind lady. Always wore a red overall. Also the air raid shelter. Although, as a 5 year old in 1960, I couldn’t understand why it was called a shelter, since the only bit you could see in the playground didn’t offer any shelter at all.
Gill Wales, thanks for your comments about my Mum. She loved working at Queens Park and had ambitions to become a teacher in the 1940s. Alas not to be. She passed in the mid 1960s.
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