Schools

Hall Green Charity School for boys, an offshoot of the Trust School in Yardley village and like it supported by the Great Trust, was opened in 1712, on the site of the builders' yard next to the Horseshoe Inn on Stratford Road. The Swinburne family provided its schoolmasters for 150 years. There were enlargements in 1825; in '98 it closed and its pupils went to the nearby Board School. A National (Anglican) School for girls was held in a rented room somewhere in Hall Green 1833-93.

There was a church school in Yardley Wood from 1838, held in a meeting house which also served as a chapel until Christ Church was built. The school closed when the Board School opened, and the building was demolished two decades ago. Its site was near the present vicarage. Spring Hill College for Congregationalist Ministers was built of stone and brick in Gothic style on Wake Green in 1854; its name came from the original college site in Birmingham. Two years later St. John's School began work off Stratford Road; the present building is 1884 with additions in the sixties. The College and its grounds were to be in succession a convalescent home, botanical gardens, recruiting centre, and Moseley Grammar School (1922). Now it is part of Moseley Comprehensive.

Yardley School Board was not formed until two decades after the 1870 Act. In a burst of activity it built four brick and terra-cotta schools, two of them in our Quarter - Hall Green and Yardley Wood, both '93. The former is the only one of the four to retain the gable inscription showing its provenance. College Road (Springfield) Schools opened it 1900.

Worcestershire Education Committee succeeded the Board two years later and added to the College Road complex, but built no new schools hereabout. It did however provide the first purpose-built secondary school in Yardley. IN 1904 the Board started a school for older children in the Sparkhill Institute, vacant after the Rural District Council had moved to the new Council House. Yardley Secondary School was opened at Tyseley six years later, and the Institute staff and pupils moved there. Pupils going to this central site from anywhere in the ancient parish could be considered for an educational grant from the Charity Trust. The English Martyrs R. C. School was at work the following year.

Birmingham Education Committee had to provide school places for the ever-growing child population of municipal and private estates in the Quarter between the wars. Billesley Schools (Al Fresco Folly style) were 1925-6, the secondary accommodation being enlarged in '38, Yardley Wood Schools 1929-36, the new buildings at Hall Green and the Sparkhill Commercial School (Institute site) 1929, and Highters Heath '31. Our Lady of Lourdes was four years later. Moseley Modern School in Glassbox style opened off College Road in '55, and Chilcote Primary three years later.

A new infant School was provided at Hall Green in the 60's, but the Board School building is part-used by Juniors. The largest complex of schools was built on the north edge of Billesley Common; a grammar school opened in '56, a secondary modern / technical (bilateral) school in '59, and the whole is now combined as Swanshurst (Comprehensive) School. Hall Green Technical College was opened on the site of Cambrai House (Kyotts Lake House), with Hall Green Bilateral School across the railway, in the sixties.