Woodford Halse
File Book 015 : YR 580 B
At the turn of the century, when the population of most villages was stable, the population in Woodford doubled with the coming of the railway to the village. The increase brought nearly 200 more children who required a place in school. To meet the need, a second building was completed in 1903. It is now the Library and the smaller community rooms. The new building housed the &lqduo;mixed” school, leaving the original building as the ‘infants” school. The whole school was also taken over by the Local Education Authority but remained a Church of England Voluntary School.
The Village continued to grow rapidly and, for a while, additional classroom space was provided by the “tin hut”, as it was ubiquitously known, placed in the area opposite the school, now the old church hall car park. It was probably similar to the advertisement for an iron school building produced by William Cooper of London, and costing £155 complete.
In 1914 the Local Authority built a second school in the village. This was a Council School and could accommodate 142 pupils. It originally consisted of two classrooms for the “mixed” school and one for the “infants”. This building now forms part of the primary school on High Street.
The two schools both continued to educate children in the five to fourteen age group until 1947, when the Council School became the local Senior School. Infants and Juniors were still educated in the Church School.
The Senior School became a Secondary Modern School and in the 1950s more classrooms were built. Changes in the government’s education policy during the 1960s meant that Woodford would be too small a school to be one of the new
