Schools in Hall Green

For four hundred years there was but one fount of education in Yardley Manor. Prosperous tenants, who could afford to let their sons go to school instead of labouring in the fields, sent them afoot or on horseback to the village : chantry priests and later chaplains served as schoolmasters. For some decades they may have taught in the church itself. The timbered Trust School which happily survives beside St. Edburgha's was built with bequeathed money in the C 15th. Its masters, who were always bachelors, lived above the schoolroom until 1732, when the brick extension provided a pedagogue's dwelling.

Many bequests to the School Trust enabled it to open a second establishment in 1710. This was the Hall Green Free School, whose site is now clear again following the Atco Building's demolition beside 'The Horseshoes'. As the master's salary was paid annually in arrears, the post could have been no more than a side-line ! Sixth to hold it was one Sam. Swinburne, members of whose family were to provide masters in unbroken succession for 125 years. They taught boys only : a girls' school was open for five years from 1833, closing when the mistress married.

For two decades after the 1870 Act, Yardley had no School Board. National (Anglican) Schools were maintained by St. Mary's, Acocks Green, and St. John's, Sparkhill. Hall Green Free (Charity) School enlarged in 1829, was recognised as a public elementary school for boys and girls in 1881. It remained the only one hereabout until the brick-and-terrra-cotta Board School was opened on Stratford Road twelve years later.

Girl pupils moved from the Charity School at once : it closed when the boys followed them six years afterwards. Yardley School Board met (and argued noisily) in a building beside Greet School until 1902, when the Worcestershire Education Committee assumed its mantle and enlarged the College Road Schools which had been the Board's last provision. The County built Acocks Green and Formans Road Schools (1908 and 1910). The old Trust School closed in 1914.

Six years after its humble beginning in Sparkhill Institute (1904), Yardley Secondary School moved to a new building at Tyseley. In 1912 it passed with all other Yardley Rural District schools under the aegis of the City of Birmingham Education Committee, whose work began hereabout with the enlargement of Hall Green School (1925-30). The Yardley Charity Trust continued to provide grants to pupils resident in the ancient manor and parish.

Rapid development of council and private estates on farmland of Hall Green required the opening of Hartfield Crescent and Dolphin Lane (Oaklands) Schools in 1929, Severne and Pitmaston ('31), Lakey Lane ('35), and York Road (Yorkmead) in '37. Post-war schools have been Chilcote ('58), Hall Green Bilateral ('64) and St. Christopher's R. C. in '69. There have more recently been even further changes, too numerous to list here.