CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS

For six centuries St. Mary's Church was the only one in the parish, though Old Hamstead Hall had its own chapel. St. John's was built as a chapel of ease on the Perry bank of Tame in 1833, and received its own parish in 1862. St. James's was opened in 1840, enparished l854, St. Michael's l855 ('61), Holy Trinity 1864 ('65), St. Paul's Hamstead 1894, and St. Andrew's 19l4. All these and four other churches have parts of what was once a single parish.

In 1840 St. Mary's Convent was opened in Hunters Road, the first Catholic religious house in the area since the Reformation. St. Francis' Church, 1847, and St. Augustine's, 1913, have both been rebuilt. There are or have been a score of Nonconformist churches in Handsworth since the first, Union Row Chapel, in 1788.

No record has survived of any medieval school in Handsworth, or of any school at all earlier than the National School in Church Hill Road which was opened in 1813. A Middle School, founded with a grant from the Bridge Trust, was built in Grove Lane in 1862. From this grew the school that has been called Handsworth Grammar School since 1890. Church schools were started by St. James's in 1843, St. Michael's in 1862, and Holy Trinity in 1869. The first RC school began in 1852. Handsworth School Board opened Boulton School in 1884, Birchfield and Wattville in l895, Rookery Road in 1898. Grove Lane (1903) Westminster Road and Canterbury Cross Schools (l907) were built by the Urban District Council. St. Augustine's RC School opened in 1908. King Edward Grammar School for Girls, Handsworth, was founded in 1911, the year when Birmingham took over the District and the schools. Recent schools include Cherry Orchard (l947) Grestone (l953-5), and Handsworth Wood (l957-8).

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