Crump Meadow Pit, Cinderford - Dean Mining Schools (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Wednesday, October 04, 2017, 22:35 (2395 days ago) @ Jefff

There were also mining schools and colleges they could attend away from the mine. Indeed, the Polytechnic that I attended in the 1980s, now a University of course, started life in 1913 as the South Wales and Monmouthshire School of Mines, at Treforest near Pontypridd in the Rhondda-Taff Valley.

Before that I attended what everyone knew as Cinderford "Tec", short for technical College, formally known as the West Glos College of Further Education, which had itself been a mining school in earlier years.

TECHNICAL SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.

Advanced technical instruction in the Forest developed principally from mining classes started by the county council in the early 1890s. Classes, including some at a less advanced level, were held in school buildings in many places, including Bream's Eaves, Cinderford, Coleford, Lydbrook, and Yorkley. Under the supervision of Francis Brain and later J. J. Joynes they attracted c.100 students and from 1900 operated a scholarship scheme. Later the classes were run from the Forest of Dean Mining School, which the county education committee opened in Cinderford in 1925. Occupying a new building next to the secondary school in Station Street, the mining school was built and equipped using grants from the Miners' Welfare Fund. More buildings were provided later, and by 1935, when the school had 126 students, the curriculum had been broadened to embrace engineering, commerce, languages, and construction. That year the education authority entrusted the school to governors representing all sides of the mining industry. As the industry declined locally the school, which in 1937 became known as the Forest of Dean Mining and Technical school (college from 1953), introduced new subjects, including forestry and domestic science, and dropped mining from its curriculum. In 1966 it amalgamated with an art college in Lydney to form the West Gloucestershire College of Further Education, which was based on the Station Street campus where it took over buildings vacated by East Dean Grammar school in 1968. The college, which took students from the age of 16, kept its art department at Lydney until 1970 and used buildings in Woodville Road, Cinderford, given up by Double View school. Following the reorganization of secondary education in the Forest area in 1985 the college was replaced by the Royal Forest of Dean College, which offered full-time and part-time courses to students from 16 to 18 years and to adults. It was provided with new buildings on the campus at Five Acres, where all the fulltime courses were held from 1989. In that year it admitted students from the Lydney area and in 1992, when it used some of the Station Street buildings for technical and employment training schemes and ran courses in schools and community centres throughout west Gloucestershire, it had c.5,000 enrolled students."
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol5/pp405-413#h3-0005

Several photos of the "Tech" c1975 starting here, use the green arrows to browse thro' them
http://way-mark.co.uk/foresthaven/livnhist/slide082.htm#

Also see some pages of photos under "Cinderford Mining & Technical College" here
https://www.sungreen.co.uk/Cinderford/_Cinderford_Page_1.htm
and this page
https://www.sungreen.co.uk/EDGS/EDGS_Buildings_1980.html

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I've just seen your last line "have wondered what my father's work may have been."
As you probably know from past threads on this forum, not many personal records have survived, as per this previous post on the subject.
http://forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=43711

Good luck with your research, Jeff.