Category Archives: Heaton Secondary Schools

Miss Cooper and her girls

‘Miss Cooper’ was the first headmistress of Heaton Secondary School for Girls and, as she stayed in post for 17 years, until her retirement in 1944, she was a big influence on a generation of Heaton girls, including social campaigner and politician Elsie Tu, who followed her from Benwell School for Girls to Heaton and wrote about her in her autobiography.

Heaton History Group’s Arthur Andrews has already researched the first head of Heaton Secondary School for Boys, Frederic Richard Barnes, and Miss Cooper’s successor at the girls’ school, ‘Doc’ Henstock so he recently set about discovering what he could find out about Miss Cooper and her time at Heaton Secondary School for Girls.

Family Background

Winifred Muriel Cooper was born in Ipswich on 3 November 1882. Her father, Thomas Embling Cooper, was a career soldier and, at the time of the 188 census, was a sergeant major with the 1^st Suffolk Rifles.

By 1891, Thomas was lodging in Derby with a young police constable, John Beckett, and John’s wife, Hannah. We know quite a lot about Thomas because, when he died in 1916, ‘The Derby Evening Telegraph’, published an extensive obituary. He had become a stalwart of the local community while working in Derby for the NSPCC, but his military record was also considered noteworthy. He had fought in Crimea and ‘met Florence Nightingale many times’. Later, he went to Malta where he converted to Catholicism and went on to serve in India at the time of the mutiny.

Teacher

The whole Cooper family soon moved to the east midlands. By 1901, Thomas and his wife, Emma, had 4 children. Eighteen year old, Winifred Muriel, the second born, was already described as a school teacher. By 1911, she had moved away from the family home and, aged 29, was appointed headmistress of Seafield Convent Grammar School in Crosby near Liverpool.

Newcastle

Winifred remained in post until the summer of 1917 when an opportunity arose in Newcastle: the former Benwell School Girls’ Department had become a school in its own right and the the school logbook entry for 3 September reads:

‘Miss W Cooper M.A. Lond commenced duties here as Head Mistress of the Girls’ Department, which has now become a separate school from the Boys’.’

By the time of the 1921 census, Winifred was boarding on Collingwood Terrace in Jesmond, The head of the household was Caroline Davies, who was described as doing social work and home duties. Also living at the property was Lily Blades, a ‘general domestic servant’. Later, Winifred moved to Tynemouth where her mother joined her up until her death in 1936.

Miss Cooper is in the third row wearing a dark top.

It was at Benwell that one of Heaton Secondary School’s most illustrious graduates, Elsie Hume (later Elliott and Tu) first encountered Miss Cooper.

Elsie wrote that, as a child of poor parents, she had encountered a lot of snobbery at West Jesmond Primary School but she found none at Benwell Secondary Girls School, which she graduated to in 1924. This must have been in part, at least, due to the example of the school leadership. And yet, Elsie didn’t speak highly of her head teacher, who she described as ‘a fiery and rather incompetent person, or so it seemed to us’. Elsie described a number of ‘tongue lashings’ she received in the head’s office but ‘perhaps the thing that most turned me from Miss Cooper was the advice she gave me when I was leaving school.

“Your fault” she said “is that you are too quiet…. Why don’t you put all your goods in the shop window” ’.

Whatever she thought of the comment, the timid school girl did eventually learn to be more assertive as many people who knew her in Hong Kong have testified.

Elsie’s memories, written around half a century after the events described, might have been influenced by her teenage emotions and may not be entirely reliable. For example, she claimed that Miss Cooper ‘had very little real knowledge but had concentrated all her studies on the history of the city of Florence (possibly she felt gratified to study about her namesake – her name was Florence)’. But we know this not to be true. Miss Cooper’s first names were ‘Winifred Muriel’. Was Elsie getting her mixed up with Florence Nightingale Harrison Bell, who presented a history prize which Elsie won?

Despite her sometimes negative views, nevertheless Elsie wrote how much she still treasured the reference she received from Miss Cooper.

We don’t have a lot more information about Miss Cooper’s time at Benwell but there was some press coverage of her speech at the annual prize giving ceremony in 1926 when she spoke about the dangers of too much pocket money.

‘Pocket money can be an excellent training,’ she said, ‘if a definite amount is given regularly and the girls are required to provide themselves with certain things. But you give them such sums that they gain little experience of the real value of money and you can hardly be surprised if they are somewhat extravagant or foolish when they grow up’.

The Countess of Tankerville, who was presenting the prizes, backed her up: ‘It is necessary for girls to learn how to spend money wisely. Education, among all the other grand subjects, should give us a practical appreciation of the use of money.’

Heaton

When Benwell school was deemed unfit for purpose, Winifred Cooper was appointed head of the new Heaton Secondary School for Girls and senior girls, including Elsie Hume transferred with her. It must have been a proud moment when, just a few weeks into her new post, she hosted the king and queen.

Film

Again, information about Miss Cooper during her time at Heaton Secondary School is quite scant. We do know, however, that she had a great interest in films and was an advocate for the part they could play in education. A 1939 article in the ‘Evening Chronicle’ refers to her as Honorary Secretary and Treasurer of The Northern Counties Children’s Cinema Council which believed that ‘the influence of picture theatres on the emotional and intellectual development of children, who spend many hours there, is not to be ignored.’ It aimed to encourage the training of film taste and discrimination in children and had set up a conference to get educationalists ‘on board’, with a view to sponsoring a Children’s Film Society.

And we know from surviving copies of the school magazine that Miss Cooper valued cultural input into school life more generally. For example, she arranged for a well known opera singer, Sybil Cropper, to perform at the school and to talk about composition and early music.

There were also a wide range of societies and school trips to widen the girls horizons, perhaps sometimes to Miss Cooper’s regret. The article below was not the only one to appear in the magazine during the 1930s following visits to Germany praising Hitler.

Evacuee

But a few years later, Britain was at war with Germany. Miss Cooper, along with other staff and the majority of the pupils, was evacuated to Kendal. Here she lodged with a retired teacher, Catherine Kitchen. There were two other members of the household, a widow with private means and a young woman who carried out general domestic duties.

Star Pupils

Mention is made in the school magazines of two head girls, Mary Graham (1930-31) and Edna Grice (1933-34).It’s interesting to see what some highly rated pupils of Miss Cooper’s era went on to do.

There are several Mary Grahams in the 1939 Register but the most likely candidate is a school science mistress with a BSc, born in 1913 and so an exact contemporary of Elsie Hume. In 1939, she was living with her parents off the West Road. She married Donald G Saunders, Chief Petty Officer, Royal Navy, in 1944 by special licence and she died in 2006, aged 93, near Hastings.

Edna Elizabeth Grice grew up in Byker. Besides becoming head girl, in 1932 she was awarded the Harrison Bell history prize, won by Elsie Hume three years earlier. Edna was presented with it by Dr Ethel Williams, Newcastle’s first female doctor and ‘a sincere friend of the school’.

By 1939, Edna was a school teacher, at that time lodging in Haltwhistle with another teacher, probably having been evacuated there. She may have been a Unitarian, as she appeared in a play, ‘Ladies in Waiting’, performed by the Unity Players at the Durant Hall, Ellison Place, for the Northumberland and Durham War Needs Fund. In 1944, she married William Harding of Cartington Terrace, an accountant and company secretary. For most of their married life, the couple lived at 27 Patterdale Gardens in High Heaton. Edna died in 2004.

Elsie herself gets several mentions in the magazines mainly because of her sporting prowess in netball and lacrosse. She also made humourous poetry contributions.

Retirement

In summer 1944, before the end of World War 2, Winifred Cooper retired at the age of 61.

There were farewell gatherings where old girls and staff, past and present, offered their good wishes and made presentations ‘to mark their esteem and affection’. The ‘Evening Chronicle’ reported that Miss Cooper would be missed in the educational life of the city and that she had abounding energy and a vital interest in all that is new in the world of education. ‘She leaves behind a tradition of hard work and keen play.’

Death

Winifred Muriel Cooper’s death and funeral in London was reported in the Newcastle press on 17 May 1951. It was said that wreaths had been sent by former members of her staff and the old girls association of the school. It was further stated that charm and human kindliness were part of her character and her outstanding educational work for Newcastle was acknowledged.

Can You Help?

If you know more about Winifred Cooper, Mary Graham or Edna Grice or have photographs to share, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Arthur Andrews of Heaton History Group.

Sources

Ancestry

British Newspaper Archive

‘Crusade for Justice: an autobiography’ / Elsie Elliott, 1981

Find My Past

‘Heaton Secondary School for Girls School Magazine’ and other resources relating to Miss Cooper held by Tyne and Wear Archives

F R Barnes: Heaton head

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We have written in the past about the opening of the school that was recently renamed Jesmond Park Academy. We mentioned that the first head teacher of Heaton Secondary School for Girls was a Miss W M Cooper and that of the neighbouring boys’ school a Mr F R Barnes.

Frederic Richard Barnes didn’t retire until thirty years later and so Heaton History Group’s Arthur Andrews decided to find out what he could about a man who was an influence on a generation of local boys.

Family

Frederic Barnes was born in 1890, the first son of Richard, a carpenter, and Mary, who had both been born and brought up in Salford, Lancashire, where the family still lived. By 1911, Richard had become a ‘manual instructor’ for Salford Education Committee and Frederic, who had recently graduated from Manchester University with a First Class Honours Degree was a ‘student teacher’. His younger brother, James, was a ‘Civil Service student’.

In 1915, Barnes married Alice Gertrude Holt, an ‘elementary school teacher’, who grew up very close to Frederic’s childhood home in Salford. His first teaching job too was in Salford.

Barnes was a historian. His article on taxation on wool in the 14th century, published in 1918, can still be read on line.

After the war, Barnes was appointed to a teaching post in Coventry before moving back to the north-west to take up the post of headmaster of Barrow in Furness Secondary School for Boys, Lancashire.

To Heaton

Ten years later a prestigious opportunity arose in Newcastle with the building of the Heaton Secondary Schools, which, it has been said, had been designed to resemble an Oxbridge college. The state of the art schools were officially opened to a great fanfare on 18 September 1928 by Viscount Grey, the former foreign secretary, and, just three weeks later, the head teachers, F R Barnes and W M Cooper, were presented to King George V and Queen Mary when the royal couple visited the new school on the day that they opened the Tyne Bridge.

On becoming headmaster of Heaton Secondary School for Boys, Frederic Barnes and his wife and two children, Frederic Cyril and Gertrude, went to live at ‘Bowness’, 55 Jesmond Park West, a newly built semi-detached house overlooking the school and its playing fields. At that time the entrance to the boys school was on Jesmond Park West so Barnes had a very short walk to work. A newspaper article at the time said that F R Barnes named the house ‘Bowness’ because his children had enjoyed excursions to the village on Lake Windermere, close to Barrow in Furness.

Sleepless

One of the concerns we know Barnes had in the early years of his headship was the inadequate amount of sleep that Heaton boys were enjoying. At the school speech day in December 1934, he presented the results of a sleep census, commenting on the ‘alarmingly’ inadequate amount of sleep that many of his charges got each night. Some things don’t change! The research revealed that 74 boys aged 13 years old and younger went to bed at 9:30pm, 79 at 10:00pm and 28 at 10:30pm.

Youth unemployment was another worry. The school’s opening in 1928 had coincided with the start of decline in the heavy industries so important to the north-east’s economy. By 1934, the situation had worsened. Barnes expressed a hope that ‘after negotiations’ more school leavers ‘would obtain a prompt start in industry’. He also appealed to parents not to restrict their sons’ choice of profession or rule out the ‘adventurous careers’. No examples of exactly what he meant by this have been recorded. The armed forces, perhaps?

Evacuee

On the date of the 1939 Register of England and Wales, a snapshot of the civilian population which was used during the war to produce identity cards, issue ration books and administer conscription, Frederic and Alice Barnes were back in the north-west with their daughter, Gertrude. The family was staying with 35 year old ‘householder’ , Dorothy I Field in Whitehaven, Cumberland. Perhaps they were on holiday? But the register was taken on 29 September during school term. In fact, the whole of Heaton Secondary School for Boys, including many of the teachers, had been evacuated by train to Whitehaven in the very early days of the the second world war.

There are a number of vivid accounts of pupils’ experiences in the public domain, including that of Colin Kirkby, who some 56 years later, remembered being given a carrier bag containing a gas mask, an identity card, a tin of corned beef and a tin of condensed milk, then being taken to Newcastle’s cattle market and then the station to be put on a train to Cumberland. Once they were in Whitehaven, he had to sit in a school hall ‘with thousands of other children from Newcastle’ waiting to be chosen by a local host. ‘I and a few others were left till last, and I think it was because we were the scruffiest.’ Luckily, he went to live with ‘a kindly old couple’. ‘I moved from a house in Newcastle with no electricity and a toilet in the back yard to a house with everything. It even had a garden.’

In March 1940, the ‘Evening Chronicle’ ran an article, headlined ‘Boys’ Comic Opera – hosts entertained at Whitehaven’. It reported that, members of the Heaton Secondary Boys School Dramatic Society had given two performances of ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’ to crowded audiences in the Whitehaven Secondary School premises, one for those who had been looking after the boys during their time in West Cumberland; the second for the remainder of the school and staff.

F R Barnes introduced the members of the society and gave details of the school’s achievements, including that the boys had won the Whitehaven and District Schools’ Association Football League Championship, with their captain, Cunnell, scoring an average of a goal a match. Like his successor, Harry Askew, Barnes was a very keen sportsman and in particular, a footballer.

‘The Heatonian’

In his foreword to issue 32 (summer 1944) of the boys’ school magazine, Frederic lamented that a whole generation had had their education disrupted during the war years. He felt that the revival of the school magazine was one more sign of pre-war normality returning, writing that for five years the achievements of the school’s scholars and athletes had gone unsung.

The 20 page issue give us a feel for the time: the school notes section concentrates on the ‘Old Boys who gave their lives in the cause of freedom’, along with those reported missing and those in prisoner of war camps. The list takes up almost 2 pages.

There were also reports of Literary and Debating Society events (A Miss Mary Robson and a Mr Simpson from the People’s Theatre had given an informal lecture at one meeting); the activities of the Historical Society; achievements in cricket, football and athletics. There were poems and stories about war, the evacuation to Whitehaven and hiking in the Lake District. The editor regretted that, because of the paper shortage, caused by the war, not all contributions could be printed.

The final page has two additions to the killed and missing and also mentions eight former pupils, who had been decorated for bravery. On the copy we have, ticks have been pencilled against two of the names: Arthur Cowie DFM and Arthur Scott DFC. Perhaps they were known to William Hedley, the original owner of the magazine. Colin Kirkby left school that year and joined the Navy, perhaps one of the ‘adventurous careers’ that F R Barnes had urged parents not to rule out ten years earlier.

Retirement

Barnes retired in 1958, after a 30 year tenure as Headmaster of Heaton Secondary School for Boys which, by this time, was known as Heaton Grammar School.

It was reported in the ‘Newcastle Journal’ on Wednesday 12 March 1958 that the school’s Musical and Dramatic Society were going to perform ‘The Mikado’ by Gilbert and Sullivan as a tribute to him. The choice was Barnes’ as it was his favourite opera and it was the first work ever to be performed by the society ten years earlier.

The account stated that Barnes had been the inspiration and encouragement behind everything the society had ever done and that everyone – the 50 boys in the cast and chorus, as well as the masters producing and managing it, were determined to make this ‘Mikado’ a show Mr Barnes would long remember. A team of pupils under the supervision of Mr Waldron, the woodwork teacher, and Mr Loughton, the scenic artist, had built all the sets.

At his retirement at the end of the summer term, former pupils presented Barnes with a television set, a gramophone and a book. Alumnus, Newcastle solicitor Brian Cato, presented the gifts and spoke with gratitude of Mr Barnes who, he said, had inspired generations of school boys and shaped their future lives.

But Frederic Barnes wasn’t quite finished. In December 1958, it was reported that he was ‘coming out of retirement’ to put the case against comprehensive schools in Newcastle. He had accepted an invitation from Robert William Elliott, the Conservative MP for North Newcastle (later Baron Elliott of Morpeth), to speak at a public meeting at the Connaught Hall. It was emphasised that his speech would not be party political but ‘solely a headmaster’s view of the Newcastle Socialists’ plan’. Barnes had previously said that he was not opposed to experiment in education but he was utterly opposed to the scheme for comprehensive education proposed by Newcastle Education Committee.

Frederic Richard Barnes died at the age of 73, on 3 December 1963.

At the time he was living at 7 Swalwell Close, Prudhoe. His wife Alice outlived him by nine years. The family grave is in Jesmond Old cemetery.

Barnes family grave, Jesmond Old Cemetery

Postscript

It has been suggested by a number of nonagenarian alumni, that Raymond Barnes, the well known school outfitter of 92 Grey Street, was a brother of Frederic Barnes but our research has found no family relationship between the pair.

Acknowledgments

Researched and written by Arthur Andrews, Heaton History Group, with additional material by Chris Jackson. Thank you to William Brian Hedley of Heaton History Group for sharing the contents of his father, William’s, copy of ‘The Heatonian’; to Friends of Jesmond Old Cemetery for help with locating the Barnes family grave and to Ralph Fleeting, a Heaton Grammar School ‘Old Boy’ for his memories.

Sources

Ancestry

British Newspaper Archive

Findmypast

‘The Heatonian’ Issue 32 (summer 1944)

WW2 People’s War: an archive of World War Two memories – written by the public, gathered by the BBC

Doctor Henstock of Heaton High

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A recent article about Heaton’s Olympians, which included a profile of the former head of Heaton Grammar, Harry Askew, elicited a number of responses from former pupils, so it seems only fair that we should look into the life of an equally legendary head of Heaton High School for Girls, Doctor Henstock.

Edith Constance Henstock was born on 3 March 1906 in Derby, the third child of four and the only daughter of Walter, a railway cerk and his wife, Rachel.

Edith was a bright girl. She won her first scholarship aged nine and attended Parkfields Cedars Secondary School, Derby, where she was an outstanding pupil, always coming first in her year. She was awarded a scholarship to Nottingham University and left with a first class honours degree in mathematics. She then went on to Cambridge to study for postgraduate qualifications.

Her first teaching post was at Darlington Girls’ School. After this, she became senior mathematics teacher at Henrietta Barnet Girls’ School in Hampstead Garden Village, London. While working there, she studied part time for a University of London MSc in the History, Principles and Methods of Science, which she completed in 1933. By 1938 she was head of mathematics at the school and had been awarded a University of London PhD in Mathematics, no mean accomplishment while simultaneously holding down such a responsible job. The 1939 Register shows Edith living at 79 Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Hampstead, a ‘private ladies’ club’, along with 12 other residents.

To Heaton

Edith’s next move was to Newcastle. She took up the post of the headmistress of Heaton Secondary School for Girls in autumn 1944, just as 400 evacuees returned to the school from Kendal where they had been sent for their safety early in the war. The school name changed to Heaton High School for Girls a few months later.

In December 1944, Dr Henstock was a member of a council committee investigating the large number of children being killed and injured on Newcastle’s roads (414 between 1941 and 1944. The committee found that most were caused by children running in front of vehicles without looking.)

In 1950, she was living at the Gordon Hotel on Clayton Road, Jesmond, now the Newcastle YWCA. But by the following year, she had moved to a large, double fronted, terraced house in High West Jesmond, where she lived for the rest of her life. The Electoral Register shows that Ada Lilian Hall, a maths and PE teacher at Heaton High, lived with her there until Miss Hall’s death in 1972.

Travels

Dr Henstock’s scholarship days were not over though. In November 1959, it was reported that she had returned from a four week educational tour of the USA, after having won the coveted, Walter Hines Page travelling scholarship. She had flown to New York with Icelandic airline, Loftleidir and travelled back to Southampton on the Queen Mary. (Walter Page Hines was USA ambassador to Great Britain during WWI, as well as a journalist and publisher. His educational travelling scholarship still exists.)

She continued to enjoy travelling the world long into her retirement, later saying that that she owed all of her adventures to the ‘old girls of Heaton’, who had ‘left their front doors open to her, no matter where their homes were’.

Comprehensive

When Newcastle eventually adopted a comprehensive and co-educational system in 1966, the headmaster of Heaton Grammar School for boys, Harry Askew, was appointed as the first head of the newly formed Heaton Comprehensive School and Dr Henstock, now aged 61, was appointed deputy.

A newspaper interview in 1982, long after Dr Henstock’s retirement, perhaps gives some insight into her character. The interview was conducted by Avril Deane of the ‘Journal‘, an ex-pupil of Dr Henstock in Heaton. The journalist speculated that ‘a little bit of the heart was torn out of the woman when the school turned comprehensive in the mid 1960s’ and she elicited from her former head that she had yearned to be a headmistress from the age of seven. Ms Deane recalled that Dr Henstock had been ‘feared and cussed and kept our velour hats on for’ by the girls and was a stickler for tidiness of mind and body.

The interviewee is reported as admitting ‘slightly apologetically that she was quite good at everything’ and, having three brothers, she was ‘not going to ever let them get one up on her’. She believed there was no such word as ‘can’t’ and set out to inspire her girls to think like her.

She was proud that she had never hit a child in over 40 years of teaching and that no pupil of hers had ever failed ‘O’ Level maths.

During the interview, with ‘clarity and honesty’, she confesses that she would have liked to marry. However, in the 1930s, as a female teacher if you married, you lost your job.

‘I do regret though not having the love and affection of any one man now that I am in my 70’s but I think it would have been impossible to devote the same attention to a husband, as I could to the girls. Each partner has to be prepared to work for the good of the other.’

In addition to travel, she continued to enjoy swimming, dancing, playing bridge and golf as well as keeping up with the progress of hundreds of Old Heatonians.

Pupils remember

There are many references to Dr Henstock on a Heaton High School Alumni website. Here are just a few:

‘Was always terrified of Dr. Henstock, even when having to partner her in tennis and badminton games. She came to visit me in Calgary in the 70s and I was still in awe of her.’

‘Doc H (awe inspiring and scary)’

‘I entertained Dr. Henstock twice in my home and my kids called her Auntie Constance and my husband thought she was lovely!!’

‘School days weren’t my happiest days, at least not at HHS, but I’ve enjoyed my life since leaving so it didn’t do any lasting damage except, to this day, I can’t let anyone link their arm through mine ‘like a common factory girl’ or eat in the street!! Dear Dr. E. Constance Henstock!!’

Death and Obituary

Dr Henstock died in hospital, aged 84, on 24 December 1990.

A short obituary was published in the ‘Journal’ with a small portrait photograph alongside it. It seems this would have disappointed Dr Henstock as Avril Deane had reported eight years earlier that she said she would like the full length photograph of her dressed in her headmistress’s gown shown above right to accompany her obituary. We have looked high and low for a better copy to set wrongs to right but haven’t so far been able to find one. Please get in touch if you can oblige.

Can You Help?

If you remember Dr Henstock or especially, have photos to share, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Arthur Andrews of Heaton History Group.

Sources

Ancestry

British Newspaper Archive

FindMyPast

Heaton High School Alumni website

Heaton Secondary Schools: the beginning

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You may be surprised to learn that Heaton Secondary Schools were officially opened by the Right Honourable Grey of Fallodon, Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Surprised because a visit some weeks later by the King and Queen is often mistakenly referred to as the opening. Here’s what actually happened!

The schools. which had provision for 500 boys and 500 girls, were erected at a cost of £140,000 and claimed to be the most up to date and best equipped in the country. The opening ceremony on 18 September 1928 was big news and covered in newspapers from Aberdeen and Belfast to Gloucester and beyond.

Quadrangle

The original plan, agreed before World War One, had been to build the school on 25 acres of land adjacent to Ravenswood Road but this project had to be shelved due to the war. Afterwards, a price could not be agreed with the landowner. Compulsory purchase was set in motion but eventually the council decided that this would mean unacceptably long delays so a site of equal size opposite the housing estate being built on the other side of Newton Road was negotiated.

The original buildings of what became Heaton Manor School

The layout of the school was said to be reminiscent of a Cambridge college with the design of open loggias around a quadrangle.

Heaton Secondary Schools West Gateway

The classrooms were ‘of the open air type, with sliding partitions along the sunny side, the north side being used for science laboratories, gymnasiums etc.’

Heaton Secondary Schools’ ‘open-air classrooms’

There were two schools each with their own hall, dining room, library, labs, a commercial room, staff room and classrooms but the two halls were adjacent and so could be ‘thrown into one to form a great hall 80 feet long by 90 feet wide’. There was a craft room in the boys school and needlework and domestic science rooms in the girls’.

The first head teacher of Heaton Secondary School for Boys as it was first known was Mr F R Barnes, formerly of Barrow in Furness Secondary School for Boys. He started with a staff of 17 graduates and five specialists. Miss W M Cooper, formerly of Benwell Secondary School, had 13 graduates and four specialists working for her in the girls’ school, Heaton High School as it became known.

As for pupils, initially there would be 291 boys and 414 girls, 455 of which would be free scholarship holders. The remaining pupils were fee-paying. At the outset, their parents were charged £8 a year. The programme for the opening event announced that ‘Mrs Harrison Bell has very kindly endowed a history prize in memory of her husband, the late My J N Bell, who was elected in 1922 Member of Parliament for the east division of the city. The prize will be awarded in the boys’ and the girls’ school in alternate years.’

Viscount Grey

At the ceremony, there were prayers and songs including ‘Land of Hope and Glory‘ and Northumbrian folk song ‘The Water of Tyne’ and lots of speeches, not only Viscount Grey’s but also those of numerous local politicians, including the Lord Mayor, and presentations by the architect, H T Wright, and the contractor, Stanley Miller.

Viscount Grey is better known as the politician, Sir Edward Grey, who was Foreign Secretary from 1905 to 1916, the longest tenure ever. He is particularly remembered for the remark he is said to have made as he contemplated the enormity of the imminent World War One: ‘ The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time.’

Viscount Grey

In his speech in Heaton, Viscount Grey, a Liberal, said ‘The ideal system would be one in which the highest, most advanced and most expensive education was devoted solely to the youthful material of the country who were most capable by their abilities to profit from it. We have not reached that point today. A great deal of the highest and most expensive education in the country is given…. to <those> whose parents are able to pay for it… but… every school like that at Heaton is bringing higher education within the reach of those whose parents cannot pay for it. This is an advance towards a better system’.

And tackling another topic which has resonance today, the former tennis champion and keen fisherman and ornithologist spoke about the variety of entertainment available to young people, reminding the audience that in his day, there ‘was no electric light, no motor cars, no telephones, no wireless and no moving pictures’. But he reminded his young audience that the things which interested people most through life were those in which they took some active personal part. ‘Take part in games, rather than be mere spectators’ he urged. ‘It will give you more pleasure than all the other entertainments that come to you without trouble.’

Live Radio

For any locals lucky enough to have one, the whole ceremony was actually broadcast on the wireless from 3:00pm until 4:30pm. Radio station 5NO had been broadcasting from Newcastle since 1922 and its signals could reach up to about 20 miles. With broadcasting still in its infancy, many newspaper listings came with detailed technical instructions on what to do if the signal was lost: radio was still far from being a mass medium but it was catching on fast and those early local listings make fascinating reading. You can view them here.

Royal Visit

Just over three weeks later, 23,000 pupils from all over Newcastle were invited to Heaton for the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to the school before the royal couple went on to open the new Tyne Bridge. And it’s this historic event which many people assume to have been the official opening. It was certainly a momentous occasion – and an excuse for more speeches!

King and Queen open Heaton Secondary Schools, 1928

‘Their majesties will drive round the school grounds where 23,000 children of the city will be assembled and on entering the school hall, the loyal address from the City of Newcastle will be presented by the Lord Mayor. Numerous public representatives will be presented to their Majesties, who will be asked to receive gifts from scholars.’

There were also displays of physical drills and country dancing by pupils.

Every school pupil present was given a commemorative booklet which included a photograph of the new school at the back but which was mainly about the opening of the new bridge.

‘To the boys and girls for whom these words are written, who have just begun their passage on the bridge of life, and who will go to and fro on the bridges of the Tyne, there is the lofty call to carry forward to future generations the progress which has brought them their own proud inheritance.’

A bouquet was said to have been presented to the Queen by the head girl and a book to the King by the head boy.

This made a lifelong impression on pupil Olive Renwick (nee Topping), who was 12 years old at the time, but at the age of 98 recalled;

We were all gathered in the hall and Miss Cooper, the head teacher, told us that the queen would be presented with a “bookie”. What on earth’s a bookie, I wondered. Only later did I realise she meant a bouquet!’

Olive (middle) & friends in Heaton High uniform, late 1920s

Again the event was broadcast on the wireless. A full day’s programming began at 10:50am with the ‘Arrival of the royal party at Heaton Secondary Schools’. And the excitement of arrival of the king and queen’s carriage pulled by four white ponies in front of thousands of handkerchief waving school children (along with hair raising footage of workers on the still incomplete Tyne Bridge) was captured on film by Pathe News.

And it shows a girl presenting a book (rather than ‘a bookie’) to the royal party. A last minute change of plan or an extra for the cameras?

After World War 2, the boys’ schools was renamed Heaton Grammar School and the girls’ Heaton High School. The two schools merged in September 1967 to form Heaton Comprehensive School. In 1983, this school merged with Manor Park School on Benton Road to form Heaton Manor. And in 2004, after the building of the new school on the Jesmond Park site, the Benton Park site closed to make way for housing.

The next instalment of ninety years of school history will have to wait for another day.

Can You Help?

If you have memories or photos of any of the above schools or know more about notable teachers or pupils, we’d love to hear from you. Please either leave a reply on this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or email chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Chris Jackson, Heaton History Group. Thank you to Brian Hedley for a copy of the official opening programme and the family of Olive Renwick for the souvenir of the royal visit. Thank you also to Muriel La Tour (nee Abernethy) for correcting the subsequent names of the schools.

Sources

British Newspaper Archives

Heaton Secondary Schools: official opening Sept 18th 1928 programme

Visit of their majesties King George V and Queen Mary, October 1928 (souvenir booklet)

Miscellaneous online sources