Schools in an Urban Community

A Study of Carbrook 1870-1965

Cheryl Parsons

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138578494
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351264266
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1978, Schools in an Urban Community is an ethnography of the Carbrook and Hill Top area of the Attercliffe district of Sheffield before it was cleared for redevelopment. The book provides an in depth look at the community and schools of the area and provides a valued contribution to the field of social history. Using interviews with former pupils, log books and questionnaires from the local community, the book provides a valuable resource for educationists and urban historians, as well as providing a detailed examination of the relations between school and community.

Chapter one

The development and nature of the Attercliffe district

From the early seventeenth century, Attercliffe-cum-Darnall has formed one of the six townships of Sheffield. The township, including the villages of Darnall, Attercliffe, the hamlet of Carbrook and a number of scattered dwellings, occupied a triangular area of 1,270 acres extending to the east and north-east of Sheffield. It is now heavily industrialized, but Fairbank’s map of Sheffield published in 1795 showed that the township was mainly rural in character, with its common lands unenclosed and without any serious incursions having been made by industry upon agricultural land. Some small industrial workings such as the foundries of Makin and Huntsman, the small iron-making concerns like those of Hutchinson and Sanderson, the colliery at Hill Top and a number of small cutlery workshops, though in evidence, had little encroached upon the striking beauty of the village’s immediate setting. The pleasant village of Attercliffe, studded with plantations and orchards, was surrounded by superb undulating woodland, traversed by a fine stretch of river well stocked with fish. The village was a noted beauty spot that served to attract walkers from Sheffield, yet present-day Atterclevians, seeing landscapes painted at the beginning of the nineteenth century, can scarcely believe the beauty of the original area.

Natural beauty was, however, soon to be marred for the enclosure of common land in 1820 made land available for later industrial development. Similarly, the opening of the canal between Tinsley and Sheffield (1819) that helped to connect Sheffield with the inland waterway to the North Sea and the establishing of a railway between Sheffield and Rotherham (1839) stimulated industrial growth. It was still possible, however, for Ralph Skelton, a native of Attercliffe, to write of the village in the 1840s that:¹

there was no prettier place for miles around than Attercliffe. Fine houses, Milner’s, Huntsman’s, Skelton’s, the Vicarage, The development and nature of the Attercliffe district New Hall, Dr Shaws, all finely wooded, make a picture difficult to match. Pen and pocket knife makers were small and country like, the canal banks picturesque, the railway new, several farms and waving crops.

The expansion of the steel industry in Sheffield had already begun by the 1840s and it was to be the flat land, local coal, abundant water supplies and established lines of communication that attracted steel makers to the valley of the Don, east of Sheffield. The river was flanked by the township of Brightside on its northern side and that of Attercliffe-cum-Darnall on its southern: the former was the first to be intensively developed though, from 1850, the latter experienced increasing industrialization with attendant housing.

The development of Attercliffe as an industrial settlement was both rapid and complete. The country village gave way to a grimy mass of unpicturesque works and houses and, as the Bishop of Sheffield maintained in a commemoratory sermon marking the restoration of Attercliffe’s seventeenth-century Chapel of Ease,² in the wake of Attercliffe’s development had followed ‘devastation and despoliation’. Similarly he observed that ‘development victimized as well as blessed’. Attercliffe’s metamorphosis was indicative of industrial wealth that, to a minor extent, had been shared amongst those living in the region but, to a far greater extent, by those industrialists based in Attercliffe but living elsewhere. The expansion of markets both at home and abroad for steel products in the second half of the nineteenth century saw both the establishment and extension of large industrial workings in Attercliffe. Many of the pre-1850 industrial workings such as Makin’s or Huntsman’s were all significantly extended and the capacity of many of the post-1850 period such as Cammels or Jessops was being increased by 1870. The rurally based industries which had figured prominently in the economy prior to the 1840s experienced both a relative and absolute decline. The metal working trades, e.g. scissor making, penknife making, which had already been established by 1840, continued to prosper for some time after the influx of the heavy iron and steel industries, though little trace of them remained in Attercliffe by the beginning of the twentieth century. The heavy steel industry sited in the Attercliffe region continued to expand in the twentieth century, covering much of the flat land bordering the Don. Within the last ten years, extensive clearance of old housing to make way for further industrial growth has occurred, leaving Attercliffe today little more than an industrial complex with a small and rapidly declining resident population.

Complementing the rapid growth of the steel industry, the increase in Attercliffe’s population in the second half of the nineteenth century was spectacular. The census of 1841 recorded a population of 4,156. After this date the rate of increase accelerated sharply to 7,461 in 1861; 16,574 in 1871; and 26,965 in 1881 – a 550 per cent increase within 30 years. The influx of population which continued into the twentieth century presented severe problems for those attempting to provide sufficient school places for the area’s young. Also, the continual arrival of new families made the enforcement of school attendance extremely difficult. Until home addresses became widely known, there were few ways in which negligent parents refusing to conform to by-laws governing school attendance could be traced.

The construction of houses to accommodate the area’s increasing work force, on the whole, kept pace with industrial development and population increase. Local directories of the time all refer to the speed with which residential accommodation expanded. The houses, of which some 3,010 were constructed between 1871 and 1881 alone, were built of locally manufactured brick. They were built initially on the ‘back to back’ principle arranged around courtyards and consisting of a cellar, scullery cum ‘living room’, bedroom and attic. Though the provision of artisan housing was often generous in comparison with conditions existing in many other industrial towns such as Nottingham, nevertheless, it was often built to the lowest standards which the by-laws would permit. After 1864, the building of ‘back to back’ houses, such as those to be seen in the upper reaches of Carbrook Street until 1963, was prohibited by law. However, the building of dwellings around congested courtyards that prevented free circulation of air, and in cramped terrace blocks, continued. By 1880 much of Attercliffe had crystallized into its present form and row after row of uniformly drab terrace and courtyard houses had sprung up around, in-between and on the very doorsteps of the works and goods yards. Crowded living conditions existing in the houses themselves and a stultifying environment outside the home placed severe restrictions upon the intellectual development of the area’s children. This was one of the major problems with which the schools had to contend.

Although Attercliffe’s industrialists figure prominently amongst local street names, only a small proportion of the housing was financed by such entrepreneurs. lnstead, local tradesmen and publicans often seized the opportunity of providing low-cost housing and profited from the rents charged as private landlords. Although this allowed housing to be constructed relatively quickly, it was not without its disadvantages, since domestic facilities were meagre in the extreme and such landlords were often the least able to afford repairs and improvements to their property. This difficulty was to persist into more recent times. The owners of large firms did, at a later stage, purchase blocks of dwellings to provide additional space for future industrial expansion. However, only modest improvements to such houses were ever made since eventually these homes were to be demolished.

An inevitable consequence of the rapid growth of industry and housing was the loss of some rural amenities that had previously been enjoyed by local people. Attercliffe’s four village greens and many footpaths had disappeared with the enclosure of common land, nothing of them remaining, save occasionally their names, now sadly out of place in heavily industrialized Attercliffe. Some pastimes declined slowly: angling falling victim to industry as fish disappeared from the Don through the discharge of industrial effluent; and hare and rabbit coursing as the open land gradually disappeared. Local traditions, however, proved more durable – the traditional harvest feast was adopted for some time by the industrial population as an opportunity for merrymaking, and the traditional local ‘feasts’ of Attercliffe, Carbrook and Darnall (each falling on different dates, usually in the month of July) continued to be observed in their respective areas until well after the turn of the century. Such feasts, accompanied by fairs, quasi-organized sports, dancing and entertainments, were patronized by all sections of the community. The local feast, that the adult community regarded as a holiday, continued to work to the detriment of school attendance until after the turn of the century.

The amenities that came to the area as the result of industry were meagre and tended to lag behind the growth of population. Unmade roads and pavements persisted into the 1880s, giving rise to the vociferous complaints that, until Attercliffe’s three representatives on the Borough Council were given their due weight in the deliberations of the various committees, the ‘teeming and toiling district’ would continue to be badly served. Open sewers, a great hazard to health, were similarly condemned, though little immediate rectification was forthcoming. The main places of recreation in the early period of industrial growth appear to have been inns and beer houses of which Carbrook, in particular, could boast an inordinate number. The profusion of beer houses can be partly explained by the heavy toil and the hot, dusty conditions experienced in the local steelworks where beer was carried, mainly by apprentices, throughout the working day. Similarly, at a time when formally organized entertainments were scarce, the inns and beer houses were heavily patronized by an industrial population which often had ‘money to spend’. The founding of local music halls and theatres occurred much later, towards the end of the 1890s. Recreational amenities financed by the Town Council, such as the public baths (1879), free lending library (1887) and the recreation grounds at Attercliffe and Carbrook (1878 and 1887 respectively)appeared towards the end of the first phase of rapid population growth. The Council’s dilatoriness in providing such facilities was attacked in successive editions of the popular Hartley’s Attercliffe Almanack and continued into modern times.

The most basic social needs of those in distress were served by the workhouse (established 1828) and by the Guardians who administered parish relief. From bitter experience, the community developed an intense distrust and hatred of institutionalized ‘charity’. As a consequence, therefore, the neighbourhood tended to look to itself for relief. Aid came through Self Help Societies and Working Men’s Clubs and lnstitutes. The Bright-side and Carbrook Co-operative Society, the first of its kind in Sheffield, was established in 1867 as the result of discussions between workmates in a Working Men’s Improvement Society. Similarly the community’s own amateur nurses, midwives and herbalists were relied upon to provide aid for those unable to afford the services of doctors, chemists or the Poor Persons’ Dispensary (established 1863). On the more simple level of day-to-day living, a strong feeling of neighbourliness engendered the giving of aid on a mutual basis if only as some form of personal insurance for the future. lnevitably a strong feeling of communal identity developed which, reinforced by generations of shared hardship, persisted into modern times with the neighbourhood capable of being unstinting in aiding its members. Such introspective attitudes had consequences for schools in the area since they were viewed as institutions imposed from outside and often staffed by those with few immediate connections with the area. The mistrust which existed of such institutions was inherited by the schools and made it difficult for them to carry out educational and pastoral roles.

Educational provision in the whole of the Attercliffe area was inadequate and, prior to the passing of the 1870 Education Act, there were only four denominational schools and eight small private establishments to cater for the district’s estimated 1,951 children of school age. Two of the denominational schools, the ‘Town Schools’ attached to Christ Church, Attercliffe (Church of England) and the Zion Congregational School, had been founded in the latter part of the eighteenth century and had been twice enlarged during the first main phase of population growth in the 1840s and 1850s. Between them they were capable of accommodating 744 pupils, though average attendance was much lower, suggesting perhaps that, even at this early stage, education fitted uncomfortably into the attitudes developing within the growing community. St Charles’s Roman Catholic School was established in 1866 offering places for 321 Catholic pupils and this was followed by the opening of Carbrook National School on the eve of the passing of the Education Act with places for a further 221 pupils. These four denominational schools were recognized as efficient by the School Board’s inspectors in 1870. Educational provision had not kept pace with the expansion of the area and the Sheffield School Board, elected on 28 November 1870, was to find a deficiency of some 700 school places in the Attercliffe region – places for approximately one third of the estimated child population.

Additional educational facilities were provided by private establishments varying widely in their range of efficiency. The fact that three of the four denominational schools were situated in the more distant parts of Attercliffe and Hill Top could go far to explain the number of small private establishments existing in Carbrook where, according to local directories, Messrs Travis, Cuttel and Hodkin and Misses Cowley and Carden held their schools. Many of these small educational enterprises, including the nearby Peacock School and Miss Elsam’s school in Beverley Street, closed when the Education Act came into force and little can now be gleaned on their work. However, three of the pre-1870 private schools continued to function – Mr Booth’s Classical, Mathematical and Commercial Academy, Mr Travis’s Day School, and Miss Carden’s Private Educational Establishment. G. R. Vine, local historian, writing in the early decades of this century, briefly alluded to the excellent standards of technical drawing achieved by one of Mr Booth’s pupils³ and to Mr Travis’s forceful methods of teaching handwriting,⁴ but it is clear that Vine, one time head of a local school (Huntsman’s Gardens School, Attercliffe), was not prepared to pass professional comment on the work of others. Mr J. B. Marrison, however, head of Carbrook National School, was not so reticent and from him emerges a critical appraisal of the work of Miss Carden. Having received her twelve boy pupils in 1891 as the result of the lady’s decision to confine her attention solely to the teaching of girls, he received the rest of her pupils (twenty-one girls) when the school closed in 1892. In an entry in the Log Book he remarked, ‘the girls are exceedingly backward. All have been placed in the preparatory class that is now too big.’ In his eyes, Miss Carden’s school on Attercliffe Common had not performed a valuable social function – its existence merely encouraged ‘negligent parents who have delayed as long as possible to comply with the compulsory clauses of the Education Act’. The Attercliffe district in the 1890s still harboured a number of parents with such attitudes and their evasions made school attendance difficult to enforce.

The lack of educational provision, particularly in the Carbrook and Hill Top areas, made it necessary to increase school accommodation after 1870. lmmediately prior to the passing of the Education Act Carbrook National School had been opened and this was to be followed by the opening of Carbrook Board School in 1874 and Tinsley Park Road Board School in 1896. It is these three schools and the relationships that they developed with the community that are the main subjects of study. These schools alone, unaided except by those on the periphery of Carbrook and Hill Top, continued to serve the area up to recent times. The schools were enlarged and reorganized several times to meet the needs of a population that continued to increase until the second quarter of the present century. It is against this background of population growth and the community’s changing attitudes to the schools that the work of the schools and their relationships with the neighbourhood will be assessed.

Notes

1J. Edward Vickers, Old Sheffield Town, EP Publishing, Wakefield, 1972, p. 75.

2Sheffield Independent,29 September 1909.

3G. R. Vine, The Story of Old Attercliffe, Ward Bros, Sheffield, 1932, p. 146.

4G. R. Vine, ‘Old Attercliffe’, Ward’s Local Annual, Sheffield, 1915, p. 25.

Chapter two

Carbrook National School and the first Board School, 1870–5

By 1870 many of the main features of the layout of Attercliffe Hill Top and Carbrook shown in the map of 1893 (see p. x) had already appeared. Attercliffe Common, linking Sheffield and Rotherham, was the district’s main thoroughfare and was in many places lined by shops and rows of terraced houses. The ‘Town Schools’ of Christ Church, Attercliffe (Attercliffe National School) lay adjacent to Attercliffe Common in the south-western part of the district and Carbrook National School, established in 1870, was sited approximately one mile to the north-east.

The Sheffield School Board undertook, through the offices of the Chief Constable, its own enumeration of children of school age and, basing their calculations on this and the 1871 Census returns, it became evident that further school accommodation was necessary in the Attercliffe-Carbrook region. To this extent, Attercliffe Hill Top and Carbrook was typical of other quickly growing industrial areas where population was far in excess of existing educational provision. In order to remedy the situation, accommodation was rented from Newhall Primitive Methodist Ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• General editors preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. The development and nature of the Attercliffe district
• 2. Carbrook National School and the ?rst Board School, 1870-5
• 3. The Carbrook schools in years of depression and unrest, 1875-96
• 4. A school born in the 1890s : Tinsley Park Road
• 5. Memories of schooldays at Carbrook National and Board Schools, 1896-1914
• 6. Poverty and the people of Carbrook, 1896-1914
• 7. The war and the post-war years
• 8. The community and schools during the inter-war depression
• 9. Teachers and pupils reminiscences of the 1920s and 1930s
• 10. The closing years of Hill Top and Carbrook
• Bibliography
• Index