Quid Retribuam

The evolution of Catholic Education on the Bank

1853-2003

2003 finds Mount Saint Mary's High School and Mount Saint Mary's Primary School together celebrating 150 years since their foundation by the Sisters Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Mount Saint Mary's High School today stands in a district of Leeds traditionally known as 'The Bank'. This high ground dominates Leeds and had originally been used as farmland but by the late 1840's it had developed into an industrial area densely packed with mills and workshops whose tall chimneys billowed out smoke which all but obliterated the sun and choked the air.

By this time, The Bank also became home to a large community of Irish Catholic families who had emigrated to Leeds to seek work building canals and railways and as millworkers. There were only about fifty Catholics living in Leeds in the 1780's but the Irish brought this to 10,000 by the 1850's. The majority of the new Irish Catholic community lived on The Bank. They were in the main very poor, their housing was quite appalling and without sanitation, disease and near starvation was commonplace. The town authorities regarded the Irish merely as a source of cheap labour and did little or nothing for their physical or spiritual welfare.

In 1851 a group of The Bank's Catholics had a chance meeting with Father Robert Cooke, a missionary from the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. They explained the plight of their community and this led to Saint Mary's Mission being opened by the Oblates. The first Catholic Mass was said on The Bank on October 22nd 1851.

The Mission was set up in the 'Spitalfield Tavern', a disused public house which then stood at the bend in the road where Richmond Street today meets Ellerby Road.

By 1857 The Bank's Catholic community had not only established a thriving mission but also, despite it being desperately poor, had raised sufficient money to build and occupy Mount Saint Mary's church.

Father Robert Cooke OMI knew that a local Catholic school was essential to the work of Saint Mary's Mission, this at a time when there was no legal requirement for children to attend any form of school. He looked to the Sisters Oblates of Mary Immaculate to support this work and they sent four Sisters to establish a convent and school on The Bank. Their convent was at first in temporary accommodation in a small Orphanage at Hillhouse Place, a building which although now empty still stands.

These four Sisters, (Sister Mary St John Evangelist Day (Superior), Sister Mary St Francis Xavier Geddes, Sister Mary St Joseph Doratt and Sister Mary St Ignatius Harris), founded Saint Mary's Catholic School in 1853 in the cellar of their convent. Their first pupils were girls many of whom worked in the local flax mills and factories. From these humble origins the next 150 years saw the school constantly developing both to meet the needs of its local Catholic community and successive changes in educational legislation.

By 1858 the Sisters had raised enough funds to build a convent next to Mount Saint Mary's Church. It was not big enough to hold the steadily expanding school that moved out of the old orphanage into a few cottages adjacent to the new convent. The cottages must have been in poor repair as they collapsed in 1861 and the school worked temporarily in a cloister of the new church. More fundraising by the Sisters soon produced the £800 needed for new school buildings that were erected next to the Convent.

The new classrooms were quickly filled by even more pupils and by 1869 Saint Mary's School had 646 pupils, arranged into separate Boys', Girls' and Infants' Departments, of which 282 were boys and 364 were girls. It was now the largest of the four Catholic schools in Leeds. In 1868 the Sisters' Order became part of the Sisters of The Holy Family of Bordeaux, whose Sisters were to serve the school and its community for the next century.

In 1870 the Government passed Forster's 'Elementary Education Act' which required that schools would in future have to be provided for all children aged between five and ten years, although attendance was not at first made compulsory. Education was funded in part by government grants and local rates although parents were also required to pay fees. This brought additional work to the headteacher who now had the responsibility of collecting the school fees but children were not to be refused admission on the grounds of non-payment. Saint Mary's School had a fee of 2d per week which many of the poorer families were unable to pay. As a Catholic school it was classed as a 'voluntary school' which obtained their funding from church collections, fees and government grants earned by 'efficiency inspections'.

The school was not the only service that the Sisters provided to the local community. In addition to caring for the sick and needy they also had a small orphanage within the convent. By 1871 it was caring for between ten and twelve girls at any one time but many more orphans needed help and the Sisters raised enough money to build Saint Mary's Orphanage which accommodated over 100 children.

The once bare hill on top of The Bank was now surmounted by a new church, convent, boys' and girls' school and an orphanage, all of which, except the church, form part of today's high school. The school curriculum was an 'Elementary Education' of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Its numerous pupils at first only had two qualified teachers with much of the teaching being done by 'pupil teachers' the youngest of whom was thirteen years old, eighteen at most. In addition to teaching children the Sisters also instructed the pupil teachers in teaching skills and helped them through the requisite examinations.

Saint Mary's School remained a victim of its own success with the resulting influx of pupils causing great overcrowding. In one case 230 infants and 90 senior girls were of necessity taught in one room. In May 1872 a new 'Mixed Infants Department' was established but that too brought more pupils and the school remained overcrowded. By 1875 Saint Mary's School had 392 pupils in the Mixed Infants' Department, 320 in the Girls' Department and 370 in the Boys' Department. In 1880 government legislation made attendance at school compulsory up to the age of ten years but even then not all children actually attended. Up to 1881 the children at Saint Mary's Orphanage had been educated separately within the orphanage but this then ceased and the orphans attended Saint Mary's School. Overcrowding again reached a pitch in 1885 with the result that Saint Mary's School, now with 1,070 pupils, reorganised itself into four departments when a 'Mixed Junior Department' was opened.

As with the original school, the new department at first opened in temporary premises. A new building for the Mixed Junior Department was opened on ground adjacent to the church in 1887. Further increases in numbers came when the government abolished school fees in 1890 and then raised the school leaving age to eleven years in 1893. In 1895 a new building for the Mixed Infants Department to accommodate 400 pupils was opened, again on ground adjacent to the church. By 1896 some 1,280 children were on the roll of Saint Mary's School.

The system of training pupil teachers changed in the 1890's when they were required to be taught at the Leeds School Board's Pupil Teacher Training College at George Street, spending half a day there and the remainder at their school. The Sisters however decided that Saint Mary's School must continue to train its own pupil teachers and established its own separate centre. In September 1896 Saint Mary's College, catering for fifteen pupil teachers, was set up in rooms attached to the convent. In addition to spending time in college training as pupil teachers the girls also taught in the various departments of the school. Saint Mary's College was also a success and by 1902 the school had built and opened the 'College block', a building which stands at right angles to the orphanage. The block catered both for boarders and day pupils of the college and it remains in use today as part of the high school.

By 1902 there were some 1,594 Saint Mary's pupils on the site and the presence of the church, convent and orphanage produced a great deal of activity. The school's first fifty years had without doubt fulfilled the dreams of the founding Oblates. This was largely due to the endeavours of the Sisters of The Holy Family of Bordeaux who worked on The Bank so diligently, some for as long as 44 years.

By 1922 the school leaving age was raised to fourteen and the attendant influx of pupils found Saint Mary's School reorganised with 'Mixed Infants' and 'Mixed Junior' schools and segregated schools for Boys and Girls aged eleven to fourteen. Typhus and cholera epidemics had stricken the Bank's Catholic community throughout the late nineteenth century only to be replaced by scarlet fever, influenza, measles and whooping cough epidemics in the 1920's.

Great poverty still afflicted the area whose houses were virtual slums and whose children were ill-fed and without warm clothing or even shoes. This was at a time when Saint Mary's School was illuminated by gas lamps and heated by open coal fires. It was not until 1920 that electric lighting was introduced and then only in Saint Mary's College, the remainder of the school had to wait until 1931 for electric lights. In the next year, 1932, Saint Mary's Boys' School was extended and included the novelty of having a playground on the roof.

The removal of the squalid housing on The Bank was eventually started in the 1930's by a council slum-clearance programme. During this time about 8,700 Catholics were rehoused away from The Bank into council properties in the Halton and Gipton areas of Leeds. Although some of the Catholic pupils continued to attend Saint Mary's School pupil numbers dropped as the slums were cleared.

The school completely emptied for a short time in 1939/1940 when the outbreak of war required evacuation. The evacuation only lasted a few months before the pupils returned but the danger was a real one with the nearby Marsh Lane Railway Depot being subjected to bombing raids with the result that air-raid precautions became a part of school routine.

In 1947 government legislation was introduced raising the leaving age to fifteen. The 1944 Education Act found Catholic schools retaining their voluntary status and generally reset the provision between primary and secondary education. As a result Saint Mary’s Girls’ and Saint Mary’s Boys’ schools became ‘secondary modern’ schools and Saint Mary’s College became a ‘direct grant grammar school’. In 1953 plans were implemented to close Saint Mary’s Orphanage in compliance with the 1948 Childrens’ Act which had recommended that children should no longer live in such large institutional establishments.

The Orphanage, which had cared for over 3,000 children since it opened, finally closed its doors when its children moved to St Mary's Home at Allerton Park. The orphanage block did not however remain unoccupied for it was handed over to Saint Mary's College to accommodate its ever growing number of pupils.

In 1959 Saint Mary's Boys' School was closed and the boys transferred to Saint Kevin's Secondary School on Barwick Road. The vacated school was taken over by Saint Mary's Girls' School as extra classrooms. It was not only the Girls' School which grew for a new swimming pool block was built on Ellerby Road in 1959 for Saint Mary's College.

An adjacent hall block was added in 1963 and its foundations, quite appropriately, sat squarely on the site of the old Spitalfield Tavern where the first Saint Mary's Mission was housed. Both these buildings are of prefabricated reinforced concrete and quite at odds with the style and quality of the school's earlier Victorian buildings. During the 1960's Saint Mary's Girls' School was refurbished and, in 1964, was renamed Saint Marie's Girls' School.

The end of an era for the Sisters of The Holy Family of Bordeaux came in 1972 when their Convent Chapel was handed over to Saint Mary's College, it is today in use as the high school library. Two years later the Sisters similarly handed over their Convent, (today also used by the high school), when they moved to a smaller convent in Spen Road, Leeds.

In 1978 all Catholic schools in Leeds were reorganised in line with the Leeds Education Authority’s model of ‘First Schools’ for pupils aged between five and nine years, ‘Middle Schools’ for nine to thirteen years and ‘High Schools’ for thirteen to eighteen years.

On The Bank the reorganization did no more than to reverse the succession of changes since the school was founded. Saint Mary’s Infants’ School’ and Saint Mary’s Junior School’ joined together to become ‘Mount Saint Mary’s Primary School’ for boys and girls using the existing premises. ‘Saint Marie’s Girls’ School’ and ‘Saint Mary’s College’ joined together as a co-educational comprehensive school, renamed ‘Mount Saint Mary’s High School’, for 720 pupils aged thirteen to eighteen years. The older boys therefore returned to The Bank from Saint Kevin’s after an absence of nearly twenty years.

As is often the case, the more things change, the more they remain the same. The school occupied all the buildings on the site including the former convent and orphanage. The former Boys’ School building was demolished to create a more open aspect and the existing courtyard, bounded on four sides by the College block, Orphanage block, Convent chapel and Convent was roofed-in to form a school hall.

Tragedy struck Mount Saint Mary’s Primary School in 1982 when early one morning the lorry carrying milk to the school fell into a large deep hole near Saint Mary’s church yard. An emergency survey found that the primary school buildings had become dangerous due to old coal mines collapsing and undermining the building’s foundations. This heralded a twenty year period when the primary school survived in temporary accommodation, first for a few months at Corpus Christi School and then for twenty years in the old Victoria School buildings. The old Primary School buildings and parish hall had to be demolished as unsafe. Extensive test drilling later confirmed that the remaining buildings occupied by the high school are completely safe. In 1989 Mount Saint Mary’s Primary School ceased to be a ‘first school’ and was reorganised to cater for children aged from five to eleven years. It was renamed Mount Saint Mary’s First School but reverted to its former name in 1992.

Yet another reorganisation of Leeds Education Authority schools was mirrored by the Leeds Catholic high schools which changed to cater for eleven to sixteen year olds in 1992. Of the five Catholic high schools then in Leeds only Mount Saint Mary’s High School was selected to be enlarged and its pupil number was increased from 750 to 900. To accommodate this increase the former Saint Mary’s Girls’ School building, at the junction of Willis Street and Church Road, was demolished to make way for new school buildings in Yorkshire stone to a style in keeping with the Victorian convent. New buildings were also added at the ‘College’ end of Church Road and this former public highway was enclosed into the campus.