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Durham E-Theses The development of elementary education in Crewe, 1840-1918 Geeson, A. W. How to cite: Geeson, A. W. (1969) The development of elementary education in Crewe, 1840-1918, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9600/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk THE DEVELOPMENT OP ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN CREWE, 1840-1918 M.Ed. THESIS, I969 A. W. GEESON ABSTRACT The thesis examines the rapid if occasionally uncertain progress of education during the difficult period of transition from voluntary to State control in a nineteenth century 'new town1 .which was created and, for the first century of its existence, largely dominated by a single industrial organization, the London and North• western (formerly Grand Junction) Railway Company. After a brief explanatory account of the foun• dation of Crewe in a rural parish where no nucleated settlement had previously existed, the early chapters describe the various contributions made by Anglican, Roman Catholic and Nonconformist communities and by the Railway Company towards the provision of public elementary schools during the first thirty years of the town's growth. Some detail is also given of the work and progress of the schools. The central section of the thesis is concerned with the period between the two major Education Acts of 1870 and 1902, duringjwhich Crewe's population increased from less than 17,000 to more than 42,000, and deals in turn with the local response to the requirements of the 1870 Act and of subsequent educational legislation, the determined struggle on the part of the town's rate• payers, denominational bodies and the Railway Company to maintain elementary education on a voluntary basis, the improvements effected by the Crewe School Attendance Committee, the influences of the State grant system on the curriculum and organization of the schools and, finally, with the training of pupil teachers. Following the Education Act of 1902, Crewe Borough Council became a 'Part III' local authority, and the remainder of the thesis constitutes an appraisal of the work and achievements, necessarily limited by steadily increasing financial restrictions, of the Crewe Education Committee during the first fifteen years of municipal control. THE DEVELOPMENT OP ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN CREWE, 1840-1918 M.Ed. THESIS A. W. GEESON 1969 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION: The Emergence of Crewe 1 CHAPTER I THE BEGINNINGS OP FORMAL EDUCATION 10 II THE FIRST RAILWAY COMPANY SCHOOLS 2J III FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE VOLUNTARY SCHOOL SYSTEM BEFORE I87O 47 IV SCHOOL PROVISION AND ADMINISTRATION BETWEEN THE EDUCATION ACTS OF I87O AND 1902 83 V THE WORK OF THE SCHOOLS l4l VI ELEMENTARY EDUCATION UNDER MUNICIPAL CONTROL 178 CONCLUSION 219 APPENDICES A THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND POPULATION GROWTH IN MONKS COPPENHALL AND CREWE, 1851-1921 231 B NATIONAL SOCIETY FORMS RELATING TO THE FOUNDATION OF COPPENHALL NATIONAL SCHOOLS 233 C EDUCATION DEPARTMENT'S NOTICES OF RETURNS FOLLOWING THE EDUCATION ACT OF I87O 2^8 D DETAILS OF THE INCOME FROM LOCAL RATES OF THE CHURCH COPPENHALL SCHOOL BOARD AND STATEMENTS OF THE BOARD'S LIABILITIES, 1875-94 241 E DETAILS OF SYLLABUSES IN ELEMENTARY AND 'CLASS' SUBJECTS PRESCRIBED BY THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT'S CODES 24? APPENDICES Page F SUMMARY TABLE OP SCHOOLS AND OTHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN CREWE, 1840-1918 247 BIBLIOGRAPHY 252 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 259 ILLUSTRATIONS Page MAP 1: THE TWIN TOWNSHIPS OF CHURCH COPPEN- HALL AND MONKS COPPENHALL IN 1852 9 PLAN OF INTERIOR AND PHOTOGRAPH OF MILL STREET WESLEYAN SCHOOL 58/59 MAP 2: SCHOOL PROVISION IN RELATION TO THE URBAN GROWTH OF CREWE UP TO 1918 82 PHOTOGRAPHS OF ADELAIDE STREET AND EDLESTON ROAD SCHOOLS 91/92 PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE CHURCH COPPENHALL BOARD SCHOOLS IN BROAD STREET AND AT MAW GREEN 113/114 PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE TWO SCHOOLS BUILT BY THE RAILWAY COMPANY IN WEST STREET 130/131 PHOTOGRAPHS OF BEECH STREET AND PEDLEY STREET SCHOOLS 136/137 ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE FOOTNOTES CB.E.C, Crewe Borough Education Committee. C.G. Crewe Guardian newspaper. Church Cttee. Crewe Church Committee, Grand Junction Railway Board. Church and Schools Cttee. Church and Schools Committee of the London and North-Western Railway Board. Crewe Cttee. Crewe Committee of the London and North-Western Railway Board. Cttee. of Coun. Committee of the Privy Council on Education. G.J.B.M. Grand Junction Railway Board minutes. L.N.W.B. London and North-Western Railway Board. P.R.O. Public Record Office. School Attend. Cttee. School Attendance Committee, Crewe Town Council. INTRODUCTION THE EMERGENCE OP CREWE As is well known, the modern town of Crewe owes its creation to the Board of Directors of the Grand Junction Railway Company who, for a number of reasons, selected this part of the Cheshire Plain as the site of their proposed new junction on the railway line between Birmingham and Liverpool in the logo's. The area in which the new model town was to develop lay in the ancient ecclesiastical parish of Coppenhall which had, at an early date, been divided into the civil town• ships of Church Coppenhall and Monks Cpppenhall. It should be noted that in this context the word "township" does not imply any form of nucleated village or settlement but refers merely to a land division. Indeed the total population of the parish in l8j51 numbered but 498, of whom only 148 lived in the township of Monks Coppenhall which was destined to become the home of the new railway (!) colony. (1) Census 1851, Part 1, vol. ii, div. viii, pp. 20-3. - 2 - The name of the new town was taken from the adjacent township of Crewe, lying to the south-east of Coppenhall, in which the railway station was built. This township, like the two Coppenhalls, possessed no urban nucleus, but contained the ancestral home and park of Baron Crewe who was violently opposed to railway development of any kind on his land. Although the Grand Junction Act of 1833 (3 Wm. IV, c.34) had obliged the Baron to allov; the railway line and station to border on his estates he resolutely forbade the sale of any land in the township of Crewe for further railway development.^ Accordingly, when the Grand Junction Board decided to transfer its locomotive works and workers from Edge Hill, Liverpool, to the more central location at Crewe, suitable building land had to be sought out• side the township of Crewe. In this quest the Board received timely assistance from the wealthy Nantwieh lawyer Richard Edleston who had between 1811 and l8l6 acquired the Oak farm and the Hall o'Shaw farm as well as other smaller estates in Monks Coppenhall, amounting (1) W. H. Chaloner: The Social and Economic Development • of Crewe 1780-1923, Manchester Univ. Press, 1950, p.5. - 3 - in all to just over 200 acres.^ Prom Edleston the Grand Junction Board was able to purchase the land it required for its proposed railway works and accommoda• tion for its workers. Thus it happened that the nucleus of railway settlement developed not around the station itself in the township of Crewe, but a mile or so away to the north-west in the township of Monks Coppenhall, giving rise to the quaintly paradoxical local proverb: "The place which is Crewe is not Crewe; and the place which (2) is not Crewe is Crewe. " •' In fact this name was not officially adopted for the town until 1869, until which time it continued to be called Monks Coppenhall, and the actual railway station of Crewe remained outside the area of the borough from its incorporation in 1877 until the extension of its boundaries under the Ministry of (1) Land Tax Returns (Monks Coppenhall), 1781-1832; Poor Rate Book, Monks Coppenhall, 1837-44; Return of Owners of Land, 1873, vol. 1, Cheshire; (These are stored at the County Record Office, Chester Castle.) Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, Jan. 31* 1846, p.77 'The Jubilee of Crewe': published by the Crewe Guardian, July 1887, p.8. See Map 1. Health's County of Chester Review Order in 1936. ' Not only does Crewe owe its birth and raison d'etre to the railway age but for the first century or so of its existence it remained a town completely dominated by the influence of railways. In retrospect it seems inevitable that this should have been so considering that the only real natural resource Crewe possessed was its position at the north end of the Midland Gate as a potential route centre, and also that no real social or economic establishment existed here previously. Even at the present time it may be said that Crewe remains an industrial island in an agricultural sea. Not until the transfer of the Rolls Royce motor-car division from Derby to its present site in Pym's Lane in 1938 did the Railway Company encounter any serious challenge to its monopoly of male employment in Crewe.

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