Sale - Worthington Road School

Sale Lodge School, the predecessor to Worthington Road School

In 1854 Edmund Howarth[1] had a school built for children who lived on the Eastern side of Sale. He lived at Sale Lodge in 1841 and owned 46 acres of land in Sale at the time of the 1841 census, having purchased much of the land in Sale Moor including the lands belonging to Old Marsland Farm and some of the Sale Old Hall Estate.

His son, Edmund the younger, lived at Sale Lodge with his father in 1851 and earned his living as a magistrate. Edmund the father (1764 – 1855) was the man behind the establishment of the school which was named Sale Lodge School. It was not situated at Sale Lodge itself, but at the junction of Wythenshawe Road and Fairy Lane.[2]

The background to the foundation of Sale Lodge School

Norman Swain in his ‘History of Sale’ provides an excellent insight into the setting up of schools in Sale.[3] In 1854, the year in which Edmund Howarth founded Sale Lodge School as a non- denominational school, a group of residents of Sale petitioned the Overseers of the Poor to take action over the Township School, founded in 1800 in School Road. This was in a poor state of repair, was inadequately funded at only £30 a year, and was not well attended, with the average attendance for the three years ending in 1854 being forty-one pupils.

Recommendations were made to appoint a board of trustees, to increase the income in order to spend money on buildings and invest a sum of £1000 to yield an annual amount to improve the system of teaching.

Those who opposed this scheme wrote to the Charity Commissioners, claiming that Dissenters were trying to take control of the school. Following the introduction of the railway to Sale in 1849 there had been an influx of middle classes into Sale, many of whom ‘were Dissenters who would not agree to public money being spent on education under the influence of the Church of England’.

It is against this background that Howarth established Sale Lodge School as a new school in Sale Moor. It was a non-denominational school.[4]

Little is known about the activities of Sale Lodge School.  One local historian stated that it appears to have been a girls’ school, but he does not provide evidence. [5] Perhaps it was in the first instance, but the photograph below would indicate that it was a mixed school.  The first school mistress was Ann Baker, followed by Mary Fitchey (1874), Miss Townend (1878), and Ada Taylor (1888)[6], with William Slate Headteacher at the time of the school’s closure. Mrs Mary Worthington voluntarily assisted here for many years.

In 1894 it was designated by the Technical Instruction Committee of the Sale Local Board as one of two continuation schools, the other being the Township School. Instruction was to be available in art, shorthand, French, dressmaking and millinery, laundry work, cookery, wood carving and joinery. To encourage attendance the fees would be refunded to those who made 24 attendances in three different subjects over the session.[7]

In March 1901 it was reported at the Sale Urban District Council meeting that the school had been closed by order of the Deputy Medical Officer owing to the prevalence of scarlet fever in the neighbourhood.[8] In 1903 it was used as a Polling Station, with Mr Slate acting as Presiding Officer.[9]

Sale Lodge School was known locally as marl pit school, probably from its location near a pond.[10] Burke, in his Reminiscences of Sale, stated that it was the British School which was, ‘better known to the Sale Moor people as Marlpit School’.

He also reported that it was now (1944) used as dwelling houses and that a building nearby had been the Nag’s Head Hotel. Opposite the school there was a large open space fenced round with strong railing which the children used to us as a playground.[11] Sale Lodge School was the predecessor of Worthington Road School, and the name initially transferred to the new school.

The school was closed when Worthington Road School opened.[12] Sale Lodge School continued to operate until 1906.[13] At the time of the opening of the new school it provided places for 130 to 140 pupils but for some time the average attendance had been 170.[14]

The Decision to Reorganise Elementary Education in Sale

In July 1902 the Board of Education of the Bucklow Poor Law Union issued a communication regarding the deficiency of accommodation for elementary day school education in Sale.

In addition to the accommodation available at St Anne’s Church School and St Joseph’s Catholic School, the Board indicated that in the neighbourhood currently supplied by the Sale Lodge School accommodation is required for 120 mixed and 75 infant pupils, and in the neighbourhood currently supplied by the Sale Township School, accommodation for 550 mixed and 228 infants.

The accommodation that was missing would have to be supplied and may have to be paid for through the rates, which would mean having a School Board for Sale. The Township School and Sale Lodge School would be maintained for the meantime, but it had been determined some time ago that Sale Lodge School should not be considered as counting for accommodation.

The Township School had already been found unsatisfactory by the Board but a scheme for rebuilding it on a new site had fallen through insufficient funds. Additional accommodation at St Anne’s would not resolve the problem and it looked to be inevitable that a School Board would have to be set up and improvements funded through the rates.[15] The Sale School Board was formed and formally took over the running of Sale Lodge School on 1^st October 1902.[16]

Worthington Road School

Worthington Road School was built by Cheshire County Council – it was Cheshire’s first Council School - to replace Sale Lodge School. The plans were approved by Sale Urban District Council in April 1904 and the school was officially opened on Saturday 23 September 1905. The arrangements for the opening had been made by the Buildings Sub-committee[17]. It described as ‘a commodious structure’ in the local newspaper, with a capacity to accommodate 400 children[18] at infant, junior and secondary levels. The cost of construction was £6530.[19]

The architects were Messrs. E.J. Thompson and son of Manchester and the contractor was J.F. Dean of Ashton upon Mersey.[20] Edward James Thompson (1859 – 1924), based in Altrincham, with a practice in Alma Chambers, 19 Dickinson Street, Manchester, was responsible for designing several schools in Sale and Altrincham, including The Board School, Sale (1903), Sale and District Central School (1914) and a school at Princes Road, Broadheath, Altrincham (1914).[21]

The opening ceremony was performed by Mr. Thorneycroft, Chair of Cheshire Education Committee, who unlocked the main entrance with a gold key presented by Mr. Battersby, chair of the Buildings Sub-committee, who was in charge of the opening proceedings.

At the opening it was noted that the school was to be named Worthington Road School. The Chairman of the Buildings Sub-Committee considered that this was ‘a graceful tribute to the late Mrs. Worthington’. The old school that was being replaced had, to a large extent, been carried on by Mrs. Worthington before being taken over, firstly by the School Board, the organization which had largely been responsible for the design of the new school, and lately by the education authority of the township.[22]

Mr. Thorneycroft was delighted to be opening the school and said that he admired the building. It was light, airy and compact and seemed admirably adapted to the sanitary welfare of the children.

The Worthingtons of Sale Old Hall

In 1840 Sale Old Hall was purchased from John Moore by Mrs Mary Worthington, the daughter of Rev. Robet Harrop of Hale Barns. Prior to purchasing the Old Hall, she lived in Altrincham with her husband, Hugo, attorney and legal advisor to the Earl of Stamford at Dunham.[23] She is the first of two people named Mary Worthington associated with this area of Sale. She is not the Mary after whom the school is named, but is the mother of James Worthington, and mother-in-law to the Mary McConnell whom James married, thus becoming the second Mary Worthington who went on to carry out many acts of charity in Sale and beyond.

It is this second Mary after whom Worthington Road and school are named. She was Mary Worthington, née McConnell (1830 – 1904), born in 1830 in Manchester, the daughter of Henry, a cotton manufacturer, and Margaret McConnell. Little is known of her early life, but she married James Worthington of Altrincham at Tideswell, Derbyshire on 24 April 1856[24] , at which time she was living in her father’s home at Cressbrook where he operated a mill formerly constructed by Richard Arkwright.

At the time of the 1861 census, she and her husband were living at the Polygon, Ardwick with their three-year old son Henry Hugo and four servants. By 1871 the family had relocated to Sale Old Hall where their retinue of servants had expanded to eight. The Worthington family had purchased the property in 1840 from John Moore

The Worthington family were still living there in 1881 but by 1891 Mary had moved into Sale Lodge following James’s death in 1887.

Mary Worthington’s life was dedicated to charitable enterprises, and she was generous with the time she spent on these. As well as giving generous sums of money to Manchester University and several Manchester charities, she supported many Sale-based causes. She was president and one of the founders of Sale and District Nursing Association, she supported the Sale Girls’ Training Home and took an active interest in Sale Girls’ High School.

For many years she stood behind a day school at Sale Moor and took part in its management. This was Old Hall School, the school which Worthington Road School replaced. Her name is well-known in the Sale district as the benefactor who purchased the land and paid the legal expenses for setting up Sale Park in 1899, which was opened in 1900 and renamed Worthington Park in 1950 in honour of its benefactor.  Mary also made a major contribution to the fund established for setting up a public memorial for James Joule.[25]

Mary was a strong liberal in her political life and a Unitarian in her religious following. She contributed to the building of the Dunham Road Chapel in Altrincham where she undertook her worship, as well as supporting the Unitarian Chapels in Sale and at Hale.

In her last years, Mary suffered from ill health.[26]  On account of this she spent winters in Torquay and went there in September 1904 where she lived at the Osborne Hotel in Torquay, Devon[27], the town in which she died on 29^th December 1904.  She was buried in Torquay Cemetery two days later. Her obituary appeared a few days later in the Runcorn Guardian[28].

When Mary died, she left an estate of nearly £48,000. As well as bequeathing art works, including works by J.M.W. Turner, to Manchester City and the Whitworth Art Galleries, she left her books to Sale Public Free Library.[29]

Plans of Worthington Road School

The ground floor was built on a T-shaped layout. It consisted of a school hall, large enough to hold 400 pupils, with four classrooms leading off the hall, each to accommodate “60 mixed scholars”.

In the centre of the front section of the building was the Infants’ room for 60 scholars, an infants’ classroom for 40 and another classroom for 60. At either end were cloakrooms and toilets for the boys and girls. These were accessed by separate doorways leading in from the school yard.

There was a room for the teachers and a separate one for the Headteacher at opposite ends of a corridor.

In the yard there were outside toilets, one shared by the girls and infants, and one for boys. In the boys’ yard was a manual construction room where crafts were taught and a covered play shed. The girls also had a covered play shed in their playground.

William Slate, First Headteacher

The first headteacher was William Slate, born in 1868. He was appointed by Sale School Board to be head of Sale Lodge School in September 1902 at a salary of £130 per annum.[30] He was headteacher at the school from its opening until March 1932.[31] He had previously served as assistant to the headmaster of Sale Township Schools and later became Mayor of Sale.[32]

As head of the Sale Lodge School he had encouraged the pupils with a love of ‘gardening, literature and thrift’.[33]

A pupil who attended the school from 1928 described him as, ‘a little martinet of a man (to us children that is), who always wore a bow tie and was nicknamed “Putty Bill” from his first name William and who always cycled to school from his big house down Broad Road…’ He was ‘a great wielder of the cane even for petty offences.’[34]

Pupils of Worthington Road School

Pupil success soon came to the new Worthington School. In its first year Howard Bracewell was awarded a Cheshire County Council Scholarship, Albert Tomkinson came first in a competitive examination for appointments to Manchester Corporation and was appointed to the Accounts Department at the Town Hall. Mabel Gunn passed the preliminary examination for a Manchester Bursary.[35]

In the 1930s the curriculum consisted of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, Geography, History, Art and Handicraft or Domestic Science.  The more academic children took the scholarship at aged ten and went on to one of the Grammar Schools or progressed to Sale Central School for a commercial or practical education until the age of fourteen.[36]

Reminiscences by P.J. Kemp, who moved to Sale in 1928 and attended Worthington Road Elementary School, recorded that the school was situated in the market garden area of Sale and stood on the edge of the houses of Sale Moor.

Most of the children came from the Sale Moor area but a few came on the no. 50 bus from Northenden. He also recalled that a maypole, around which the children danced and sang, was erected at the school each year.[37] This custom was still taking place at the school in 2007.[38]

Alterations at the School

Under the terms of the 1902 Education Act, Sale Worthington Road School fell under the auspices of Cheshire Local Education Authority, and, in 1906, this body published a notice of intention to purchase 2440 square yards of land adjoining the school to provide additional accommodation to serve Sale, Northenden and the Rural District of Bucklow.[39]

On 18^th November 1940 the school was hit by an unused bomb from a raid by a German aircraft which jettisoned six high explosive bombs over Sale Moor. It ‘landed on the boundary wall of Worthington Road School, considerably damaging the housewifery centre.’[40]

The boundary wall was at the front of the school near the caretaker’s house and the bomb blast damaged windows, walls and the roof. Luckily the children were safe in the four shelters that had been erected near to the start of the war.

The building was repaired within three months so that the school could return to full use.[41] During the war boys joined the digging for victory scheme by growing their own vegetables on allotments at the side of the school.[42]

In 1946 Cheshire County Council advertised for tenders to erect prefabricated hutting to provide a kitchen and dining room for the school and to demolish the Air Raid Shelters.[43] In 1952 tenders were required to reinstate half an acre that had been the A.R.P. Shelter site, [44] and twelve years later, for extensions and adaptations to the approximate value of £14,000. [45]

Much of the school’s more recent history is documented in a well-illustrated book, The Story of Worthington School by Christopher King, published by the school. This draws upon on the school’s excellent archive of photographs and the School Log Books. It includes the information that the outside toilets in the yard were replaced in 1966 by inside toilets.

The school celebrated its centenary in 2005. In 2012 an oak tree which had been planted by Mr Slate next to the school garden was cut down to make way for the new building. The current school was officially opened in January 2015 with Dame Sarah Storey unveiling a plaque in the school hall.[46]

Author: Richard Nelson, Volunteer, Trafford Local Studies

Further research

You can find more building plans and archival records using the Trafford Local Studies catalogue.

Sources

[1]. Newhill, John, Sale, Cheshire, in 1841 – Its people and their Lives, Ashton and Sale History Society, Sale Cheshire, 1994.

[2] Newhill, John, The Story of Sale from 1806 to 1876 – A House Detective Book, self-published, Sale, Cheshire, 2000.

[3] Swain, N.V., A History of Sale – from Earliest Times to the Present Day, Sigma Press, Wilmslow, Cheshire, 1987

[4] Swain, N.V., A History of Sale – from Earliest Times to the Present Day, Sigma Press, Wilmslow, Cheshire, 1987

[5] Cedric II, Local History Cuttings, Trafford Local Studies, LHC/152

[6] Cedric II, Local History Cuttings, Trafford Local Studies, LHC/152

[7] Northwich Guardian, 1 Sep 1894, p.5

[8] Sale Urban District Council Minute Book No. 8 1899 – Jul 1903, 5 Mar 1901. Trafford Local Studies SAL/1/1/2/8

[9] Runcorn Guardian, 8 Apr 1903, p.4

[10] Swain, N.V., A History of Sale – from Earliest Times to the Present Day, Sigma Press, Wilmslow, Cheshire, 1987

[11] From Wilfred Burke, Sale Sixty Years Ago, 8 Jun 1946 in Cedric II, Local History Cuttings, Trafford Local Studies, LHC/152

[12] Burke, Wilfred Robert, Reminiscences of Sale, Manuscript at Sale Local Studies, 1944, p.47

[13] Newhill, John, The Story of Sale from 1806 to 1876 – A House Detective Book, self-published, Sale, Cheshire, 2000

[14] Altrincham, Bowdon and Hale Guardian, 27 Sep 1905, p.4

[15] Runcorn Guardian, 31 Jul 1901, p.5

[16] Report of the Monthly Meeting of Sale School Board, October 1902, Newspaper Cutting (not referenced), 370, Sale Education, Trafford Local Studies,  96276665

[17] Altrincham, Bowdon & Hale Guardian, 2 Sep 1905, p.1

[18] Altrincham, Bowdon and Hale Guardian, 27 Sep 1905, p.4

[19] King, Christopher, The Story of Worthington School, Worthington Primary School, Sale, Cheshire, 2017

[20] Altrincham, Bowdon and Hale Guardian, 27 Sep 1905, p.4

[21] Manchester Victorian Architects Edward James Thompson (II) - Architect | Architects of Greater Manchester [Accessed 2 Nov 2024]

[22] Altrincham, Bowdon and Hale Guardian, 27 Sep 1905, p.4

[23] Newhill, John, Sale, Cheshire, in 1841 – Its people and their Lives, Ashton and Sale History Society, Sale Cheshire, 1994.

[24] Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 19 Apr 1856, p.2

[25] Runcorn Guardian, 7 Jan 1905, p.2

[26] Runcorn Guardian, 7 Jan 1905, p.2

[27] Transcript of burial record, Torquay Cemetery, Find My Past

[28]  Runcorn Guardian, 7 Jan 1905, p.2

[29] Liverpool Evening Express, 21 Feb 1905, p.6

[30] Winsford & Middlewich Guardian, 1 October 1902, p.4

[31] King, Christopher, The Story of Worthington School, Worthington Primary School, Sale, Cheshire, 2017

[32] Burke, Wilfred Robert, Reminiscences of Sale, Manuscript at Sale Local Studies, 1944. Burke was born in 1879 and died in 1965.

[33] Altrincham, Bowdon and Hale Guardian, 27 Sep 1905, p.4

[34] Kemp, P.J. Sale School Days Some 50 Years Ago in Memories of Sale and Ashton-upon-Mersey, Trafford Library Services, 1988

[35] Runcorn Guardian, 6 Jun 1906, p.4

[36] Kemp, P.J. Sale School Days Some 50 Years Ago in Memories of Sale and Ashton-upon-Mersey, Trafford Library Services, 1988

[37] Kemp, P.J. Sale School Days Some 50 Years Ago in Memories of Sale and Ashton-upon-Mersey, Trafford Library Services, 1988

[38] King, Christopher, The Story of Worthington School, Worthington Primary School, Sale, Cheshire, 2017

[39] Stockport Advertiser, 27 Apr 1902, p.1

[40] Report of air raid on Mon 18 Nov 1940, Sale Guardian 3 Nov 1944, Trafford Local Studies, Sale Town Clerk’s Newspaper Cuttings Book, SAL/1/5/5/2/1/8 p.5

[41] King, Christopher, The Story of Worthington School, Worthington Primary School, Sale, Cheshire, 2017

[42] Byron, F. & Partington, M., Sale in Times Past, Countryside Publications, Chorley, 1983, p.34

[43] Stockport Advertiser, 24 May 1946, p.8

[44] Stockport Advertiser, 15 Feb 1952, p.8

[45] Alderley and Wilmslow Advertiser, 14 Aug 1964, p.12

[46] King, Christopher, The Story of Worthington School, Worthington Primary School, Sale, Cheshire, 2017