Education in Burgess Hill:

In 1811 the National Society for promoting the Education of the Poor had been founded as the Church of England’s response to the great headway that the non-conformist churches had gained in chapel attendance in industrial areas. Through the 18^th century they were using their Sunday schools to teach the children of working families to read and write.  This basic education for all was generally lacking in rural areas and the Church eventually made it their mission to provide it.  Previously, the only poor children who got the chance to learn to read and write were those who lived near a ‘charity’ school. Where these existed they were usually provided by a philanthropic rector or land owner.

Burgess Hill had actually been involved in funding a ‘charity’ school, not in Burgess Hill, but in the village of Telscombe (in the Downs east of Brighton). Two small farms at St. John’s Common had been bought in the 1770s by the Rev. James Povey, the Rector of Telscombe, who then dedicated their rents to running a small school for the village children. One of these farms was the land of ‘The Brow’ and the old Martlets Hall area and the other, formerly the land of the beadle of Clayton manor, was just off the west side of the common. This farm then came to be known as Poveys and the farmhouse was where Southway School now stands. Rev Povey’s name is commemorated in the nearby road, Povey’s Close.

The following images show: First, the pedestrianised area by Martlet’s Hall (built 1972, but recently demolished). Second, the same place in circa 1900, back gardens of Norman family home. Third, Telscombe village’s former school house.

During the 1830s the Bishop of Sussex, William Otter, was actively campaigning for ‘Education for all’ and he had also promoted the idea of setting up a Teacher Training College as part of the programme. He died in 1840 and Bishop Otter College in Chichester, one of England’s earliest, was immediately founded in his memory.  The Venerable James Garbett had been a personal friend of the Bishop and shared his sense of mission.  It seems no accident that such a person should be rector of the combined parishes of Clayton-cum-Keymer which were known to have, at St. John’s Common (now Burgess Hill), a ‘missionary area’ among the workers of the burgeoning brick and tile industry. The Venerable Garbett visited the brick works and saw for himself that young children were being used as labourers in the trade and he campaigned against this and in favour of getting them into school. He had achieved the first step by 1840. (See below).

The great leap forward in public education was the 1870 Education Act which established ‘Board’ schools in the land for children aged 5 to 13.  They generally came to be known as ‘National Schools’ and the education they provided was to be free, compulsory and non-religious.  One great aim of the Act was to abolish child labour throughout the kingdom. This free education would be funded by a new rate which all existing local rate payers were to pay. This spelt the end of private subscription to fund Board Schools.

The Church of England and other lobbies objected to the ‘non-religious’ requirement because their schools would be unable to carry on, so it was conceded that they could continue if parents were allowed to withdraw their child from doctrinal lessons if they wished. This enabled the London Road School to carry on. The amendment also allowed for entirely private schools to be set up, a choice which was eagerly embraced in Victorian Burgess Hill (see 4 below).   For the London Road school, the local Clayton cum Keymer School Board (of managers) was formed in 1873 and all the existing school buildings were transferred to it, making the Board responsible for running costs, maintenance and improvements from then on.

In 1837 James Garbett tapped into the Church of England funds which were then available for the cause of educating ‘the poor’ and used them to set up Burgess Hill’s first school. Former stables on the west side of the London Road were used for the purpose. This building was later demolished and a row of cottages was put up, which are still there opposite the end of Station Road. A site for new school buildings was then found on the east side of the road, a little way downhill. The result was the solid red-brick building which we often see portrayed in old photos and postcards. In contemporary sources such schools were generally referred to as a ‘National School’.  Built in 1850, it had a school master’s house attached, with living accommodation for 1 principal and rooms for a clergyman at weekends. The latter was needed because it functioned as a schoolroom on weekdays and a chapel at weekends. The cost of £674 was raised by public subscription.  Henry Breeds and his wife were the first teachers (See end notes). In 1858 for a further £450, again by subscription and public bequest- especially from Col. Elwood of Clayton Priory -additional buildings were added.  An infant school was built in 1874 and a new girls’ school in 1883 at a cost of £1,400.

Six years later the Local Government Act of 1894 established the Urban District Council of Burgess Hill which took over the running of the school.   The ‘Board of managers set up an office in Mill Road and Kelly’s Directory for 1895 shows that one of them, George Collins, was an ‘attendance officer’. This could be a thankless task as school was often skipped for local fairs and fetes, for haymaking and harvest, and sadly, for a lot of serious diseases such as diphtheria and whooping cough. Such facts were recorded in the school log book, which the Schoolmaster had a duty to keep and, where they survive, they make entertaining reading. They are usually kept in County Record Offices these days but our Association has a transcript made by Dorothy Kenward of the 1872-1879 log book for the London Road School. Kelly’s Directory for 1895 records that the Board offices were in Mill Road and the Attendance Officer was one George Matthew Collins of Springfield Terrace.

In 1891 a great step had been taken in the provision of public education (as it was then called). In that year the school leaving age was raised to 13 and a new partnership between the state and the local councils was forged. The charging of any fees in these schools was forbidden. In return for good local management, the Board of Education contributed a ‘per capita’ sum of ten shillings for every child in the school. Translated into modern money that is 50p. today. Translated into a meaningful rate in today’s terms, it would be at least £200 per child, if not more. The rest of the funding came through local government rates as before.  See also: ‘Secondary Education’ below.

The London Road School ran for another 32 years, as a primary, and for seniors to 15 until Oakmeeds was built in 1954. It closed in 1986 and was sadly demolished in 1989 – another part of Burgess Hill’s heritage gone for ever.  West Sussex County Council, (then the Education provider) was struggling with the costs of keeping the old building in, a decent state of repair. Jen Fernee, a former headmistress and a member of our Association, often reflected on the difficulties of teaching with buckets on the floor to catch the leaks and howling gales coming in through closed windows! But the pupils and staff have since transferred to a brand new Primary School called London Meed which has been erected in the grounds of Oakmeeds School, or, as it is now called, the Burgess Hill Academy.

The following images show: First, London Road School. Second, gardening in the grounds of London Road School. Third, the  School Board building in Mill Rd and the London Road School Stoolball champions.

By 1880 the part of town which was east of the railway line, had been growing more populous, year on year, mainly due to the arrival of the Keymer Brick and Tile works and the massive expansion of an old brick and tile concern just beyond the end of Folders Lane, the Ditchling Potteries (now Ditchling Common Industrial Estate). They and the large mansions and villas on the hill of Burgess Hill. had both attracted many new families. They all needed workers, servants and services.

Brickmaster Sampson Copestake himself established a school in Cants Lane in 1882 for the children of his workers at his adjacent Brick and tile works. It was a two-storey building in red brick, decorated with terracotta briquettes, tiles and finials, all produced at the works. Its religious leaning was to the Church of England Copestake’s own faith, rather than to non-conformism, which also enjoyed support among brick and tile workers. A similar school also existed near the end of Folders Lane in Burgess Hill, for the children of the workers at the Ditchling Potteries.

The Cants Lane School had been leased to the Education Authority since 1883 but it was too small for the growing numbers of local children. Eventually a site was found at the bottom of Junction Road in Worlds End, on farmland belonging to the lord of Keymer Manor, Charles Scrase Dickens. manor who personally owned the land there. Known at first as the ‘Mixed and Infants Eastern District Board School, Junction Road’, it was built in 1891 at a cost of around £3,500. Average attendance was recorded in 1895 in Kelly’s Directory as 73 girls and 89 infants with one mistress in charge of each group. The 140 boys at the London Road school in that year must have included the Worlds End boys. However, the school was being enlarged in that year to accommodate up to 120 boys and girls. There was a large house for the headmaster which later became apartments to let for teachers in the area when housing was scarce and salaries low. Historian A. H. Gregory mentions the then headmaster (1933), Mr. A. P. Baughn, who was locally celebrated for his work as the Hon. Sec for Burgess Hill’s charity carnivals on Bank Holidays.  He was also, at that time, involved with the first public library scheme in Burgess Hill and he took care of in the supply of books for the St. Andrew’s Working Men’s Club in World’s End. The School itself was generally known then as the Junction Road School, renamed as Manor Field School later in the 20^th century.

The school’s most recent two-storey extensions are in red brick, attractive in design and in sympathy with the original 1890s architecture. They partially replaced a large array of prefabricated huts which had been put up over the intervening decades to cater for a massive swell in pupils from new housing developments on the east and north sides of town: from the large 1940s St. Andrew’s Council housing estate to the 1970s Maple Drive estate, the first phases of the Folder’s Lane Estates, Chichester Way, Welbeck Drive ….. the list goes on. The first new Primary School to be built  to ease the pressure was Birchwood Grove Road School, opened in 1970, catering for children living on the southeast of town. But numbers at Manor Field still kept rising. In the mid 70’s all the housing in and off the eastern part of Maple Drive, from Coopers Close to Dumbrills Close, had been built with no local school, so the children all originally went to Manor Field.

In 1980 Manor Field was then reputed to be the largest primary school in the whole U.K.  In that year, when the Education Authority elected Downlands School in Hassocks as the new secondary (comprehensive) school for children from Manor Field, they left a primary school of 920 pupils to start at a new secondary of only 850 pupils.  Opening in the early 1980s, Sheddingdean Community Primary in Maple Drive eased the pressure on Manor Field and took pupils from the previous and the next phase of building north of Leylands Road. It stands on the fields of the old Sheddingdean. Farm, adjacent to the site of the beautiful old farmhouse, which had been allowed to deteriorate and was then demolished.

The following images show: First, Cants Lane School. Second, Manor Field School, the red brick Victorian school with the modern extension sympathetically styled slightly to the rear. Part of a ‘prefab’ class room, still in use, can be seen on the left side. Third, the old Sheddingdean farm, now the site of the Sheddingdean Community Primary School

Housing development on the west side of town had burgeoned in the late 19^th century but progressed very slowly after that, until the 1970s.  The Gattons Infants School in Royal George Road was built on land belonging to the Gattons     farm, hence the name. Children over the age of 7 go on to Southway Primary School, built on the site of the former old Povey’s Farm. Taking into account the Rev Josiah Povey’s Educational Charity (above), the Southway site will have been dedicated to the cause of education from the 1770s to the 20^th century. The photos below show the former Povey’s Farm, Telscombe Village, and the old School House founded by the Rev. Josiah Povey, from his farmland in Burgess Hill.

A postscript: Burgess Hill Heritage & History Association has a good collection of old photos of London Road School, but hardly anything relating to the other Local Authority Schools. If anyone reading this has some, we would be very glad to have some copies to keep for posterity.

The 1870 Act had given the green light to private and faith schools at a time when Burgess Hill, especially the hill area, had become an attractive choice for the middle and upper classes to live.  A suitable school was often next on the list.  Research done in the 1980s in an Adult Education class in Burgess Hill traced Burgess Hill’s private schools back to the 1850s.  Using the Census records they found that there were no fewer than 14 establishments in the town between 1882 and 1903, including Ladies’ or Girls’ boarding and day schools and private schools for ‘Boys’ or ‘Young Gentlemen’. One, at Avonhurst in Inholmes Park Road, progressed, daringly, from being a Young Gentleman’s School’ to become Burgess Hill High School for Boys and Girls. Where Cleveland Gardens now stand at the top of Junction Road there was a girls’ school called Helena Hall, which ran until 1938.  At Inholmes Mansion, former home of brick master Sampson Copestake , there was a Preparatory School for Public Schools and Royal Navy. These facts and more are published in ‘A very Improving Neighbourhood’ including a compehensive list of private schools from around 1860 on. [See End Notes] None of these private schools have survived. A  P.N.E.U. (Parents’ National Education Union) school came to Burgess Hill in 1906 through Miss Beatrice Goode, a young teacher trained in the principals of the movement.  A short history of this flourishing school follows under ‘Secondary Education’.

In 1916 a “School for the Deaf”, advertised as an ‘oral’ school, was set up and run by Mary Hare at Dene Hollow on London Road. Catering for deaf children from all over Britain and the rest of the World, it encouraged pupils to speak and not just to rely on sign language. The pupils were entered into the public examinations as in any other school. The Burgess Hill historian A. H. Gregory referred to it in glowing terms as ‘…a splendid school …. her methods and achievements being simply marvellous…’.  Donkeys and goats were kept in their 26 acres of grounds where interacting with the animals was all part of the children’s education. After Mary Hare’s death in 1946, the school continued in Burgess Hill but in 1947 the Trustees purchased Arlington Manor in Berkshire and the School transferred there in 1949. For a link to some recent research on the school by Brighton historian Louise Peskett, part of her ‘100 Pioneering women of Sussex’ project, see the notes at the end of this article.

The following images show: First, Avonhurst, on Inholmes Park Road, second, Helena Hall School, now Cleveland Gardens a small housing complex near the  top of Junction Road, and third, Dene Hollow, formerly in the London Road.

Several schools started up in the 1920s. Among them were Baron’s Court, St. Peter’s Court and the Savoy School. The latter was an educational movement for boys, deriving from previous schools in the Strand in London on the site of the medieval Court of Savoy (part of today’s Savoy Hotel complex). The Burgess Hill school lasted a decade from 1927 to around 1937, occupying Firtoft house in Mill Road, with a large playing field alongside the road to the north.   A girls’ school, ‘Baron’s Court’ opened in Dunkeld, in Oakwood Road, formerly belonging to the Mckergow family, (since demolished). It catered for girls from age 5 to 18 and welcomed children from abroad. Apart from the usual subjects it taught dancing, the pupils being entered into local competitions. It closed in 1959.   Also in the 1920s, a school called St Peter’s Court moved from Hove to a large house called Highlands in Leylands Road (where Highlands Drive is now situated), formerly known as Holland House. It was described as ‘a remarkably good preparatory school for young gentleman’.  The pupils were easily identified by their predominantly yellow uniform. The school later relocated to Abbotsford in Cuckfield Road, but in 1971 it returned to Burgess Hill, to Upper St John’s Road. More recently only its Nursery School in Park Road remained, but this has now closed.

On Catholic faith schools in Burgess Hill, A. H. Gregory, writing around 1933, mentions that, ….good educational work is being done at the convent of Our Lady of Angels in Inholmes Park Road.  But he gives no further details.  From 1937, however, Roman Catholic education was provided by Franciscan sisters at Wynnstay, at the top of the hill, the former home of brick master Sampson Copestake.   It continued until 1966 when a new primary school, St Wilfred’s, opened in School Close off the Brow.  Until 1983 local Catholic children went to St. Joseph’s in Haywards Heath for their secondary education, an age-11-18 school with its own sixth form. In 1983, to accommodate the rising local population of both towns, a new purpose-built St Paul’s Catholic College opened opposite ‘The Triangle’ Leisure Centre on the outskirts of Burgess Hill when it had outgrown its premises in   Haywards Heath. It primarily caters for children from Catholic families, from age 11-18 with over 1,100 pupils drawn from both towns and the surrounding area.

The final fee-paying school in Burgess Hill, the Parents’ National Education School (PNEU) was founded with 9 pupils in 1906 by Miss Beatrice Goode, as headmistress, on the educational principals of Charlotte Mason. It was at first sited in the old Constitutional Club in Church Road (now Lloyds Bank) It is the third school which provides secondary education in Burgess Hill today, as Burgess Hill Girls, A brief note of its history follows, under Secondary Education.

The following images show: First Baron’s Court Burgess Hill 1278,  second, St. Peter’s Court Burgess Hill  1285, and third, Wynnstay and its garden, a Catholic school from 1937-1966.

Burgess Hill Girls, as it is now called, a fee-paying school for girls from 2+ to 18, occupies a spacious site comprising two former Victorian private houses, the Oaks and the Croft, with modern wings and sports facilities at the top of the town in Keymer Road. It was formerly known as Burgess Hill School for Girls and, before that, the Burgess Hill P.N.E.U. School.

The P.N.E.U., Parents’ National Education Union was started in 1888 as the inspiration of Charlotte Mason who was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1842.  In those days the better-off families had traditionally taught their girls at home and this is why it started out as a movement of parents. Miss Mason had worked out an entirely new approach to education, believing that children had a natural love of learning and that teaching should be delivered in a way that sparked their imagination and which allowed them to explore further knowledge freely and happily and not rigidly constrained by curriculum. Every good idea needs a backer and she found one in Henrietta Montagu, a member of a wealthy Jewish family and a keen suffragist. Having met Miss Mason in 1890, she was so inspired by her ideas that by 1892 she had set up the first London school to put the philosophy into effect.  Henrietta then became the first secretary of the P.N.E.U., giving lectures throughout England and abroad to spread the word.

Charlotte Mason set up her own school at Ambleside, in the Lake District, where she trained and employed a young teacher named Beatrice Goode and then sent her forth to found a ‘pioneer’ school. She came to Burgess Hill and a parents’ committee of three, Mrs. Hammond, Mrs. Hallett and Mrs. Thornton, founded the ‘pioneer’ school with 9 pupils in 1906, with Miss Beatrice Goode as their teacher.  Her two sisters Ada and Patricia Goode later joined her. Their mission was to give girls as good an education as the boys, although at first boys were admitted as well in the early years. They were then using 1 room over what is now Lloyds Bank.

The school widened its catchment and enhanced its reputation and expanded into the whole of the Church Road building, by taking in boarders from the U.K and from abroad. Prior to this they had posted lessons out to the children of British families who were living out there with their parents. To accommodate the boarders they took over various large houses on the hill as dormitories, as they came available. One of these was Avonhurst in Oakwood Road and the school’s web site, under ‘history’, has a photo of one of the bedrooms there.   The school moved from Church Road to its present site in Keymer Road in 1928 as the two Victorian Houses we can still see today, ‘The Oaks’ and ‘The Croft’, were acquired. The latter was opened in 1931by the Bishop of Lewes. All three of the Goode sisters retired together in 1938 and were given a huge farewell with a large marquee in the grounds, an event packed with dignitaries and peppered with fond recollections and tributes.

A history of the school written by Angela Davies does indicate the lack of academic pressure in those days, compared with today. A more rigorous timetable came in in the 1970s to enable the school to compete in a world where a good academic education was freely available locally. The school has indeed found its niche and it still attracts boarders. It is well-regarded locally and is a valuable part of the town’s present as well as its past.

There is a lot of information about the present school on their web site, and a few more old photos and more history to be found on the Burgess Hill Girls web site.

The following images show:

First, Burgess Hill Girls ‘first school’, formerly the Burgess Hill P.N.E.U. School in the old Council building in Church Road, currently Lloyds Bank.

Second, the main P.N.E.U. (Parents National Education Union) premises on Keymer Road, viewed from the tennis lawns.

Third, Beatrix Goode who came to Burgess Hill  to found a ‘pioneer’ P.N.E.U. school.

There was a plan for a new secondary school, but it came to nothing. The Urban District Council had been formed in 1892 and they later took over the old Constitutional Club building in Church Road (now Lloyds Bank) as their offices. In January 1898, however, they had conceived a new purpose for the building.  They wanted to set up a Day Secondary School and Technical Institute there.  Mr Sinnock, voicing the proposal, declared ‘in an impassioned peroration’ that with such a school, Burgess Hill, …..in addition to sending out her bricks and tiles, crocks and pans, would be enabled to manufacture works of art and thereby render herself world-wide famous. Feelings for and against were so strong, and so loudly put, that the meeting became chaotic, as historian A. H. Gregory conveys (See End Notes). The motion was lost and Edwin Street’s proposal to put it before all the ratepayers was not taken up.  The local County Council (East Sussex) ‘owing to the divided state at Burgess Hill,’ decided not to support it with a grant and so the dream died.

When the 1891 Education Act was passed, raising school leaving age, the London Road School was bought by the County Council for £1000 and it became both a primary and a secondary school combined. The Junction Road School (above – now Manor Field) had just been opened but it only catered for primary education and all secondary school-age children from its catchment area went to London Road for their secondary education. After the 1944 Education Act, with its legislation to select, at the age of eleven, those pupils who were suitable for a higher academic education, and those who were not, London Road became the state school in Burgess Hill which catered for the ‘were nots’. However, in line with a prevalent view among the academics of the day, it did offer education to the age of 16 or 17+ for those whom they realized had been misjudged at eleven and who wanted to continue.  The Burgess Hill students who had passed this new ‘Eleven Plus’ exam went on to the County Grammar Schools in Hove, Blatchington Mills (boys) or Neville Road (girls). This ceased with the opening of Oakmeeds in 1954 as the town’s new ‘Comprehensive’ school, open to all 11 – 18 year olds who wished to attend.

London Road Primary School reverted to primary status after Oakmeeds School opened in 1954. It ran into serious problems in the maintenance of the buildings in the 1980s and has since been developed for housing (School Close). The photos below are a memento of the period in the 1980s when Jen Fernee, an active member of our Local History Society, was headmistress of the school and gave us lots of photos. The school has now transferred to a new building carved out of the old Oakmeeds fields.

Oakmeeds was at first a Secondary Modern School, built on part of Burgess Hill Farm (whose land had mostly gone to housing by then) on a field then known as Woolgar’s field where football matches were played. Developed as it was, from a large farm of 128 acres, there was sufficient land for generous provision of playing fields. As secondary education was still selective, the children who had passed the 11+ exam then went to a new Grammar School at Haywards Heath. In 1965, however, the Government introduced a requirement for all Local Education Authorities to bring forward proposals to move away from selection at age 11 and to provide equal access to all levels of education for all children.  Both East and West Sussex County Councils keenly embraced these ideas, which meant that Oakmeeds and the other Sussex secondary moderns would become comprehensives, able to offer, on top of its existing curriculum the same academic routes to O-levels, A-levels, Further and Higher Education as any other school.

Access to further education was slightly affected by the Local Government Act of 1974 when Burgess Hill, Hassocks and Haywards Heath were transferred from their old county of East Sussex and became part of West Sussex. Oakmeeds remained an 11-18 school for Burgess Hill children until around 1980 but was then too full after that to take them all due to the rise in local school-age population. By then there were 1600 pupils in a school built with a capacity for 1100. Two remedies were provided, both, at first, hotly protested against by most parents. First, east Burgess Hill in the Manor Field catchment would go by train to Downlands School in Hassocks as their Comprehensive. Until then Downlands had been part of the selective system but it had been upgraded with new facilities and was about to launch as a comprehensive. But neither these pupils nor those at Oakmeeds would have an 11 to 18 school. At 16 everyone would go out on their various paths. For A levels they would go up to the old Haywards Heath Grammar School, which would now be a Sixth Form College. Bhasvic and Varndean colleges in Brighton were also available for Burgess Hill 6th-formers. Further education and continuing Art education was affected by the change to West Sussex. Instead of going on to colleges in Brighton or Lewes, students went to Crawley College, and for pre-University Arts Foundation, either to Horsham or to Durrington near Worthing, all longer journeys than before.

New legislation in 2010 created academies and allowed schools to choose this route if they wished. Academies would have greater freedom in setting their own curricula and in engaging people from the community, with their various forms of expertise, to teach alongside those who have been formally trained as teachers.  Brighton University (who provide the standard Teacher Training BA Degree) were interested in the idea of working with Oakmeeds. They recognised that our town had a significant number of small businesses as well as a Business Park with some high-end companies. Oakmeeds thus became an Academy in 2016, specialising in business and enterprise and linked to the University of Brighton. The university also provides formal supervision at Oakmeeds of student teachers during their teaching practice. It is envisaged that the new all-in school for the ‘Northern Arc’ housing developments, now commencing, will also be an academy.

As observed under ‘Private and faith Schools’ above, St. Paul’s College caters for the children aged 11-18 of Roman Catholic families in Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and the surrounding area.

Divorcing the sixth forms in the State system from their feeder schools has put local pupils at some disadvantage in recent years, as the Haywards Heath Sixth form College closed in 2017 due to “too high debt and falling pupil numbers”. Like the Further Ed. and Art students before them, all the Mid Sussex students aiming for Higher Education have had to travel to Horsham for their A-level courses and exams.  This meant that they have missed out on the joyous photo-shoots of A-level successes  in the ‘Middy’, our local newspaper, and in one year at least, only ‘Burgess Hill Girls’ was there to represent Burgess Hill. The Haywards Heath campus is expected to be re-opening soon.

An ‘anomaly’ has been caused by the tide of new housing in the far north east of the Town at Worlds End, which has flowed over the parish boundary into Wivelsfield Parish. So, both primary and secondary school age children living in those new roads ‘in Burgess Hill’, in RH15, an area only accessible from Burgess Hill, are now not even in the same County as the rest of their town. Wivelsfield is still in East Sussex. For many years now, despite it being only a short walk from home to Manor Field School and a longer but ‘do-able’ walk to the local Academy, they go first to Wivelsfield village school and for their secondary education, 6 miles through country lanes to Chailey Comprehensive.

Apart from Mary Hare’s school for the deaf (noted above), Abbotsford Community school was located in Cuckfield Road on the edge of Burgess Hill. It catered for up to 48 boys aged from 8 to 16 with special educational needs After being put in special measures it finally closed in 2006 but was then used to teach pupils permanently excluded or not on a school roll.  Newick House School,  continued the work in a large house on Leylands Road (now demolished). When land at Birchwood Grove Road became available for development a new, modern building was erected adjacent to Birchwood Grove Primary. It moved again in 1986 to a site alongside London Meed on the Burgess Hill Academy site. There are now new premises, Woodlands Meed and welcomes pupils age 2-19 who live within an hour of Burgess Hill. The school benefits from a team of   speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, special school nurses and physiotherapists working alongside the teaching staff.

The following images show: First, Abbotsford Gardens before becoming a school. Second, Burgess Hill Academy’s  playing fields, the former oak lined meadows, the ‘Oakmeeds’ (in 1982) of the former comprehensive, now Burgess Hill Academy. Third, Povey’s Farm ( now the site of Southway School) has been linked to the cause of education since the 1770s.

The main story of Education in Burgess Hill was assembled for this article by Jean Poulson and Stephanie Swaysland, with additions from other members of the BHHHA.  Please let us know if we have got anything wrong and we can amend the text. If there are any published histories about individual schools ‘out there’, please let us know their details (author, title, date, etc.)  and how to get hold of a copy; and photos, of course!

D. Meads, alias ‘Historicus’, Historical Notes of Burgess Hill 1828-1891 (Chas. Clarke, 1891)

A.H. Gregory The Story of Burgess Hill, pp. 63-68, and his Mid Sussex Through the Ages, passim.

The former includes a list of early heads and teachers at the London Road and the Junction Road schools, p. 64; re. Technical School proposal, p. 67;  re .P.N.E.U. school, pp.65-6; PNEU also in his …..Mid Sussex, pp.157-158. Mid Sussex through the Ages is arranged chronologically and is more difficult to chase specific topics, but the obituaries of former teachers of Burgess Hill can be very informative once found.

Brian Short (ed.), A very Improving Neighbourhood, (Sussex Univ., 1984), Chapter 7

For a short history of the first Teacher Training College in Sussex, see, T. Brighton and H. Warne, A portrait of Bishop Otter College 1839-1990, (WSIHE, 1992)

Kellys’ Directories 1855, 1875, 1895 and 1918 (ie., those that the editor happened to have to hand.) Kelly’s and other directories were issued each year, including the local Charles Clarke ones and many are researchable on line.

For further information on Mary Hare and photos of the school for the deaf, see on line, Louise Peskett’s  blog series’, ‘100 Pioneering women of Sussex’.

Personal information re the 20^th century from: John Buck and Stephanie Swaysland; and the children (b. 1969, 1971 and 1975:  Manor Field, Downlands) of web editor Heather Warne.