Bream School Records (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Friday, August 02, 2013, 14:54 (4133 days ago) @ Roger Griffiths

My thought too Roger but as I have NO experience/knowledge whatsoever of schools at that time I didnt like to say. Do we know what form of school Bream was (ie was it a NON C of E ?)

Here is just part of an excellent history of the schools in the Dean, Bream gets mentions elsewhere in the attached webpage too.

"Henry Poole established a day school for the children of Bream, where he was minister, and the adjoining part of the Forest in 1830. It occupied a new building north of the Coleford road at Bream Tufts, erected by subscription and incorporating a schoolhouse, and was run on the National plan with boys' and girls' departments. It taught 80 children in 1847. Poole supplied the deficiency in its funds, which, despite support from the Crown and Mary Gough's educational charity for Bream, were insufficient because of the poverty of local residents. Poole's successors at Bream kept the school open and in 1862 the Revd. Cornelius Witherby moved it to a more central position at Bream's Eaves, where the Bible Christians had started a short lived day school at their chapel the previous year. The new National school and schoolhouse, provided with financial help from Alice Davies, stood east of the Parkend road with separate accommodation for the junior boys and for the junior girls and infants. From 1865 the departments were run as separate schools and in 1874, following some additions to the building, an infants' department was formed. In 1888 the junior schools were merged and in 1889 the school had an average attendance of 176. The building was enlarged in 1893 and 1900 but was overcrowded in 1904 when the attendance was 382. To provide more places the county established a temporary infants' school in the Primitive Methodists' nearby schoolroom in 1905 and opened a new infants' school opposite the C. of E. (formerly National) school in 1907. In 1910 the new building, called Bream Council school, had an average attendance of 153, including some juniors, and the C. of E. school remained overcrowded with an attendance of 311. The council school was enlarged in 1912 and again in 1927, when it was reorganized to take junior girls and infants and the C. of E. school was left with junior boys. In 1938, when their average attendances totalled 367, both schools had many spare places and in 1951 the C. of E. school, which had accepted controlled status in 1948, became a junior mixed school and the girls' department at the council school a secondary modern school. Following the secondary school's closure in 1973 the C. of E. school moved into the buildings west of the Parkend road and in 1992, as Bream C. of E. (Voluntary Controlled) Primary school, it had 222 children, both infants and juniors, on its roll. The building which it had vacated became a youth centre and library."

"In the 1930s the county ran technical classes in several Forest schools, and following the Education Act of 1944 it had secondary grammar, modern, and technical schools in Cinderford and secondary modern schools at Five Acres and Bream. All of those schools were affected by later reorganizations of secondary education in the Forest area."

From: 'Forest of Dean: Education', A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5: Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, The Forest of Dean (1996), pp. 405-413.
URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=23274 Date accessed: 02 August 2013.

Note the references to the "C. of E. school, formerly National, School".

Hope this helps.