CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS

Duddeston's first church was St. James's Ashted, which had been Dr. John Ash's house. It was consecrated in 1810, but had then been in use for nineteen years as a private chapel. Enlarged in 1835, it acquired a tower, and in 1853 a parish. Damaged in World War II, it was demolished in the 1950s. Population growth beyond Ashted brought St. Matthew's, completed in 1842 and given a parish out of Aston that included all of Duddeston and Nechells. Eight years later the R.C. chapel of St. Joseph was built in the Catholic cemetery on the valley side off Long Acre. Enlarged in 1872 it then became a parish church. Like St. Matthew's but unlike all others herein it is still open. St. Clement's on Nechells Park Road opened in 1859 and is now closed awaiting demolition. Other Anglican churches with dates of opening and closing are St. Lawrence Dartmouth Street (1867-1951), St. Anne's Cato Street (1869-51) and St. Catherine's Scholefield Street (1878-45). St. Vincent's R.C. began in 1883 as a school chapel in Vauxhall Grove: there is a recently-built church in Duddeston Manor Precinct. Details of other churches and chapels may be found in Victoria County History, Warwickshire Vol. VII.

There was a church school at Ashted in 1828, which stayed open for 32 years. Until after the 1870 Act all schools were denominational: those in Legge and Lawley Streets were opened in 1839 and 1850, and three were started in 1868- St. Joseph's R.C., St. Lawrence's C.E., and St. Matthew's (re-named St. Anne's) C.E. The Birmingham School Board needed to provide buildings to educate many thousands of children: their schools in Duddeston and Nechells, with opening dates, were:- Bloomsbury (Lingard Street), the very first Board School in the Borough, with places for 1059 children (1873), Windsor Street (1874), Dartmouth Street (1876), Grosvenor Street (1877), Eliot Street (1879), Loxton Street (1883), and Cromwell Street (1889).

Birmingham Education Committee superseded the Board and took over its schools in 1902: only Nechells Park Road (1904) and Charles Arthur Street Schools (1911) were new requirements in districts fully developed and with a declining popu-lation. St. Vincent's R.C. School was built in 1931, its teachers being nuns from the Convent in Great Brook Street. Reorganisation after the 1944 Act brought changes of name and function to many schools. Re-development has swept away all but two - Eliot Street (Nechells Sec. and J.I.) and Cromwell J.I. New Church schools are St. Clement's, St. Matthew's, and St. Joseph's. County Schools are Vauxhall Gardens and the huge Duddeston Manor Comprehensive.

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