Middlesbrough Remembered
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St Paul's School
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Closing of St Paul's School
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Evening Gazette, July 21st, ,1961
Four o’clock today meant that not only the end of school for 113 Middlesbrough children. It also meant the end of their school---St Paul’s, between Greta Street and Victoria Street, Newport. .Closing time has been looming ahead of St Paul’s for over a year. Middlesbrough’s Education Development Plan has long provided for its eventual shut-down.
Although the school is a shadow of its former self, it is still remembered in Newport as as one of the top schools in its heyday, set in a smart district and enrolling 600-700 pupils yearly. It was one of the first schools built in Middlesbrough –and only a few more years would have brought its centenary.
St Paul’s has always been a church school. It was opened in January 1868, officially as an infants’ school. But it was used for junior boys and girls until the following year, when the boys’ wing was opened and the infants school could be started. In 1871 the complete school block was opened and St Paul’s started on a long period of prosperity
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Ex-Pupils
It is difficult to trace any famous ex-pupils according to the last Headmaster, Mr F.A. Walker. A former Bishop of Melbourne, Australia may be one of them. The school’s reputation is based on solid all round education not occasional brilliance. One of the school’s legends is that out of a class of 44 boys who attended 50 odd years ago , no less than 36 of them now own their businesses.
But in the last few years St Paul’s has had ”quite a few ups and downs” according to Mr Walker.” Church schools usually do,” he commented. St Paul’s ceased to be a state-aided school in 1950 and became state-controlled which meant that ecclesiastical members of the Board of Managers were, for the first time, in a minority.
The beginning of the end for St Paul’s was during the war. For during the night of May 11th 1941 the building was totally destroyed by bombing. In the school log book ,the entry for the following day, made by Miss Gertrude Venables, the Headmistress then, reads laconically....
No session, school having been razed to the ground by enemy action
A St Paul’s Pupil the day after the Bombing
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The catastrophe meant that St Paul’s had to be housed in Newport Road School, in premises that had already been condemned and abandoned as unsuitable for school use. But such was the post-war pressure on schools that it was not until September 1957 that Middlesbrough Corporation pronounced sentence: the school’s equipment and premises were inadequate for the proper training of secondary modern children so St Paul’s was reorganised as a junior mixed and infant school only.
Since then houses in the district have been demolished all round and families have moved out to the housing estates. St Paul’s roll call has dropped and dropped.
Its 113 pupils will be absorbed by Newport Road School , Marsh Road School and Danegarth.
No Inconvenience
The staff—all three of them?---One goes to Newport Road , one to St Hilda’s and Mr Walker to take over as Headmaster of North Ormesby Junior Boys’ School.
” This will mean no inconvenience for the children.” said Mr Walker.In fact some of them will not have so far to go. As a church school , anyone from any part of the town could come , it was never an ‘area’ school.”
St Paul’s will not be missed on the practical level. But in Newport its closure has caused lots of regrets.
“I’ve had many messages from parents ,saying how sorry they are,” Mr Walker said. “It’s very sad, of course, especially as the centenary was so near.”.
But the last school function, a closing down service in St Paul’s Church , Newport Road, takes place tonight. Among those invited are the Mayor and Mayoress of Middlesbrough , Ald and Mrs Newton, members of the Education Committee, the Director of Education, Mr E.D.Mason, all the head teachers in Middlesbrough,and all old scholars and parents.
A former Vicar of St Paul’s, Canon A Perryman, now Rector of Whitby, will preach the sermon.
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