137 Glanmôr School
Swansea’s
district of St Thomas has three streets named after Crimean War battles –
Inkerman, Balaclava and
Sebastopol.
Likewise the housing estate at the top of
Glanmôr Hill has four streets named after Oxbridge Colleges -
Newnham Crescent
and Girton Villas (
Cambridge), with Lady
Margaret Villas and
Somerville
Court (
Oxford).
These colleges were founded in the 19
th
century as women’s colleges (though both Lady Margaret and Somerville now
accept male students).
Those street
names were chosen because
Glanmôr
School once stood on that
site, and the college names are those of four of the seven “houses” in the
Girls’ School.
As Carol Powell points out in
“Glanmôr Remembered”, after the First World War Swansea’s Director of Education
wanted to cater for children who were “not quite bright enough for Secondary
Education, but too bright to languish in Elementary Education until they were
fourteen”.
So Glanmôr was built as a “
Central School” on the site of Cwmgwyn Farm, and
opened in April 1922 for boys and girls, using surplus army billet huts from
Codfood Camp on Salisbury Plain.
These
wooden huts were arranged around a grassy area in a rectangle,
with each linked by an open veranda, and
were intended as temporary accommodation, expected to last from ten to fifteen
years: in the event they would be in use for over fifty!
The boys’ section had 278 pupils in the
eastern part, and the girls’ section had 243 in the western part.
In 1930 Glanmôr received full
Secondary School status, becoming on a level with Swansea’s two boys schools,
Dynevor in De La Beche Street and the Grammar School on Mount Pleasant Hill,
and two girls schools, Llwyn-y-bryn in the Uplands and De La Beche (where the
Orchard Centre now stands).
School plays
– including Shakespearian dramas - would take place at the YMCA’s Llewelyn Hall
or St Gabriel’s Church Hall in
Bryn
Road.
During the Second World War
pupils were evacuated to
Oxford
Street School,
which was safer, being a solid stone construction; boys used the first floor,
and girls the ground floor, while Glanmôr was occupied by American
soldiers.
After the war,
Butler’s 1944 Education
Act raised the school leaving age to 15, and the Glanmôr boys were dispersed
among various secondary schools, leaving Glanmôr as a Girls’ School.
The 618 pupils were divided into
seven houses – the four mentioned earlier, with St Hilda’s and St Hugh’s, both
named after
Oxford
colleges, and St David’s.
Netball and
rounders took place on school premises, but hockey entailed a trek up to the
playing fields on Townhill.
New buildings were put up for science, art and music, and following
educational reform Glanmôr became a senior comprehensive school in 1970, when
pupil numbers reached 898.
School trips
were made to such places as Brecon Cathedral, the National Museum of Wales in
Cardiff, and what was then called St Fagan’s
Folk Museum,
and to the Continent.
But after 50 years of use, the
huts (known both disparagingly and affectionately as “the cowsheds”) were
inadequate, especially once the school leaving age was increased to 16.
So
Glanmôr
School was closed in 1972
- some girls climbed on the roof and painted the words “Parting Is Such Sweet
Sorrow”, from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”.
However the buildings continued to be used, in 1974 by second and third
year pupils of the new
Olchfa
Comprehensive School,
while high alumina cement that had
been used during its construction was removed, and as an annexe by
Gorseinon College of Further Education.
When proposals for a Welsh-medium comprehensive school on the site did
not materialise, Glanmôr was demolished in August 1989 to make way for
housing.
All that remains of the school is part of the perimeter wall and a stone
entrance-Arch, on the corner of Glanmôr
Road and Penlan Crescent,
but the regular reunions of the Glanmôr Old Girls Association show that it is far from being forgotten.
I was a pupil at Glanmor School from 1963 and it was a Grammar school then not a comprehensive school as previously stated. Also, at that time, there were only four Houses i.e. Newnham, Girton, Somerville and Lady Margaret.
ReplyDeleteI was a pupil at Glanmor Grammar School from Sept 1960 July 1967 and remember all 7 houses. I was in Girton house. Miss Hunt was our headmistress and Miss Beatrice Evans the deputy head. Amongst the teachers I remember were Miss James (Welsh) Miss George (French) Miss M Evans (Maths) Mr Peplow (History), Miss Loxton (Maths) and Miss Bailey (Physics) ...I could go on. I well remember the "cowshed" classrooms, freezing in winter and boiling in summer. Only this week I found the long school photograph which brought back many memories. Rosemary Dixon
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