The History of MSM 1853-2005
In
grateful memory to our founding Sisters who came to The
Bank in 1853 and who, through their faith and endeavor
worked selflessly to build and to light a Beacon of faith
and learning that has shone brightly for 150 years.
Sister Mary St John Evangelist
Day
Sister Mary St Francis Xavier Geddes
Sister Mary St Joseph Doratt
Sister Mary St Ignatius Harris
The Evolution of Catholic Education on the Bank
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.
Certainly the school's high school pupils enjoyed excellent
facilities which were in marked contrast to their juniors
at the primary school who by now languished in a long condemned
old school. It was not until 2001 that the primary school
was informed that it was to have a new school to be opened
in 2003.
In 2003 the school moves forward with faith and confidence
into the 21st Century and trusts that their recent inspection
reports would receive the approbation of those four remarkable
Sisters who came to The Bank in 1853:
"This is a sound school which provides a broad and
balanced education supported by clear Catholic values.
The spiritual, moral, personal and academic development
of pupils is well supported in a caring community."
"The school has a positive and powerful climate that
reflects its commitment to high standards and a genuine
concern for the well being of its pupils. It is based
on the school's aims and the Christian values that are
central to school life." |
