Reflections: Looking back at 190 years of schooling in Milton Parish
Schools and colleges in Milton Parish have developed considerably over the last 190 years. From humble beginnings in the 1830s, providing a basic education, we now have a selection of state and private academic establishments in the New Milton area which ensure that students are prepared for further education or the work place, writes Nick Saunders.
Education and schooling developed in a somewhat piecemeal fashion in our parish and was initially driven by charity and the church. The Sunday School movement had been started by Robert Raikes, a Gloucester newspaper proprietor, in the late 1750s.
These schools were created to help impoverished families, especially those in slum areas. Raikes believed that vice and criminality could be prevented by education and this was a better method of intervention than punishment. In 1811 the ‘Anglican National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church in England and Wales’ was created. The schools that they established were known as national schools.
Some idea of the level of poverty in Milton Parish can be gauged by an 1816 dated list recording 48 paupers out of a population of 522 which is just over 9% of the parishioners. By 1831 the population of Milton Parish had risen to 956 however, the 1834 voters registers showed that just 28 residents owned their own properties.
Evidence of a sunday school and the creation of the first national school in Milton village can be found in a minute book held in the Hampshire Record Office which covers the period 1835 to 1838. The first page of the minute book states that a sunday school had “for some time past, been in active operation in Milton Parish”. It goes on to record that many parishioners wished to extend the benefits of this schooling to the weekday.
The funds available in 1835 were only enough to cover a sunday school. It was proposed to ask the more affluent members of the parish to make a contribution to help start the weekday education programme. It was recognised that there were “a great number of children whose parents are wholly unable to contribute towards their education”. Their children’s fees would be covered by local donations.
At a meeting held on 30th of November 1835, a committee was created to set up and manage a weekly school “for the education of the labouring poor according to the principles of the established church”. A second committee of ladies was formed to inspect and oversee the girls part of the school “with a view to their being instructed in such work only as shall qualify them as useful domestic servants”. The work the girls carried out would be paid for by those who required it. The money would help to fund the school. The committee were urged to ensure that only “plain work and knitting was introduced into the girls school”.
A later minute records that 40 local children were allowed to attend the school on the following terms. Fifteen first class children would be required to pay twopence a week each for their education. Fifteen second class children would pay one and a half pence a week and 10 third class children would pay a penny per week. Later minutes show how more children were admitted to the school and that by 1838 the were about 100 pupils. Mr James Olding and his sister Sarah Hayward were appointed as the master and mistress of the school.
A school room was needed. A plot of land at the junction of Old Milton Road and the Lymington Road was donated by Mr James Bursey, a church warden, farmer, and landowner. This was located to the east of the George Public House in Old Milton, outside the present-day Forest Arts Centre. Timber for the building was sourced locally and brought to the building site, free of charge by a local carter. The school was built of brick and had a thatched roof.
It was completed in 1836 at a cost of £100 which was paid for by two members of the local gentry, Sir George Topp and Sir George Rose. There was so little traffic that the roads around the school were the playground for the children. Postcard images show that in 1910 the school sports day was held on the Lymington Road. The school moved soon after the First World War to a hutted complex on Gore Road at the junction with Vincent Road. The buildings were then used as the church hall until 1931 when it was demolished.
The Gore Road school used ex-WW1 military buildings which were surplus to requirements. They had been bought at auction and were relocated to the site. The wooden huts were considered to be temporary with a life span of about ten years, by which time it was anticipated that a permanent school would have been built elsewhere in Milton Parish.
The headmaster at the time of the 1919 move from Milton Village was Mr Cornelious ‘Skip’ Barker. He remained in post until 1949 by which time the school had 289 children aged from five to 11 and the school was still using the temporary wooden buildings. In 1953 two more temporary huts were erected in the school grounds. With the increasing number of pupils, the conditions were cramped.
The buildings were no longer fit for purpose. Not only were parents writing letters of protest but Dr Horace King MP stated in the House of Commons that the headmaster and staff were facing “formidable difficulties” at the school. In July 1959 New Milton Junior School opened in Old Milton Road. Many of the pupils from the Gore Road school were moved to the new modern building. In 1983 the temporary buildings were finally demolished and the site developed for housing.
On the 27th of June 1969 New Milton Infant School was formally opened next door to the junior school. The opening ceremony was performed by Alderman, Mrs Olive Troke accompanied by the mayor of Lymington Borough Lt Colonel T.H. Reddy. The first head mistress was Mrs G.M. Evans who had suffered many years of teaching at the Gore Road site.
In Ashley, a non-denominational school was built on the corner of Lower Ashley Road and Hare Lane in 1879. It became the Ashley County Primary School. When the current junior school was built in 1951 near the top end of Lower Ashley Road, the pupils moved to that site. The old school building remained in use as a special school until it was demolished in 1985. A pupil from this school was William Retford, the renowned violin bow maker. He lived from 1875 to 1970 and left a fascinating account of his memories of life in the village.
Ashley Secondary School was built in 1939 on Ashley Road, and is still in use. Almost as soon as it opened it had to cope with an influx of evacuee children from Southampton. These children were moved here to avoid the anticipated Blitz on Southampton. During this period the school was used by local children in the morning and evacuees in the afternoon. One of the school masters who came from Southampton with the children was a Mr Eric Wyeth Gadd, who wrote a book, Hampshire Evacuees on his experiences of living in wartime New Milton.
Another well know master from this school was Arthur Lloyd. He was highly regarded for his local history knowledge and the many publications he wrote on a wide range of historical subjects. The late, great historian and previous author of these Reflections articles, Jude James, was also a pupil at the school and was inspired to go on a complete a degree in history by Arthur.
In 1960 another secondary school was opened in Gore Road. Initially called the New Milton (Gore) Secondary School, after amalgamation with Ashley Secondary in 1970 it was renamed the Arnewood School. The Arnewood School became a comprehensive in 1992, and later a grant-maintained school. It obtained sixth form status in 1995 and in 2002 became a technology college. It continues to go from strength to strength.
Private education has been well catered for over the years in Milton parish. One of the earliest of these was a school for girls founded in 1893 by a Miss Hawkins before being bought by a Miss Clarke and a Miss MacNamara. Initially located in a large house called Branksome on Ashley Road near to Ashley Arnewood manor house it moved in 1919 to Fernhill Manor and became Fernhill Manor School for Girls. It eventually closed in 1995 on merging with Edinburgh House School.
Near to Fernhill was another private school utilising a large family house. Great Ballard Preparatory School came into being after the First World War. The house, built in 1906, had formerly been the home of the Ubsdell family. The school remained there until 1940 when the army commandeered the house and grounds. In 1946 Edinburgh House Preparatory School relocated from Lee on Solent and took up residence there. In 1995 the school merged with Fernhill Manor to form the Ballard College.
In Barton, Furzie Close Preparatory School was founded in 1909 in a large house in Becton Lane. The first headmaster was a Mr Stubbs. The school moved out following a fire before the Second World War. In 1945 Durlston Court School moved there from Dorset. Sadly in 1947 another fire devastated the school buildings and killed Miss Josephine Wood, a maid, who was trapped in the building. The fire and its aftermath were reported in this newspaper on 24th of May 1947. The school was rebuilt by H.H. Drew builders of New Milton. Durlston Court was able to purchase the building and grounds from the family of a previous headmaster. This has secured long-term investment in the school enabling it to thrive.
There have been a number of other schools in Milton which are no longer in existance, such as Speedwell Preparatory School in Manor Road. The poet John Heath-Stubbs was a pupil at this school. He later taught poetry at Oxford and was appointed an OBE. Other preparatory schools once in the Milton area include Homefield Preparatory School for boys in Barton Court Road, and Hengistbury School on the sea front at Barton on Sea. This building went through many uses as a variety of different educational establishments, a hotel and a nurses hostel before ending up as a home for displaced Eastern European refugees from 1954 until its demolition in the 1990s.
Schooling and education, both state and private, has been very prominent in Milton Parish. Although the early provision of education was somewhat basic, today the local schools do a superb job of educating and moulding our young people to be the citizens of tomorrow.
