Catalogue description Westways Primary School, Mona Avenue, Sheffield

Admission registers, 1901-1984 (CA987/1)

Infants' Department, 1901-1984 (CA987/1/1)

Junior Department, 1933-1968 (CA987/1/2)

Log books, 1901-1988 (CA987/2)

Infants' Department, 1901-1983 (CA987/2/1)

Junior Department, 1915-1988 (CA987/2/2)

Evening School, 1903-1943 (CA987/2/3)

Punishment register, 1933-1957 (CA987/3)

Westways Primary School, Governors' records, 1977-2000 (CA724/P142/1-3)

Westways Primary School

These records include references to named individuals (children and staff). Consequently they are closed to public inspection for 75 years under the General Data Protection Regualtion (exempt under section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act). Please refer to Sheffield Archives for advice on how to access such items.

These items were transferred from the school to Sheffield Archives in May 2013.

• Education
• Schools
• Primary schools
• Educational Institutions

Previous names:

Western Road, 1901-1969

Westways Nursery First and Middle, 1969-1992

Westways Primary, 1992-present

The issue of additional school provision in the Sheffield suburb of Crookes was first raised by William Patrick of Tasker Road in 1898, when he wrote to the Sheffield School Board regarding school accommodation in the area. His letter, accompanied by a memorial (petition) signed by over four hundred local people, highlighted what was regarded as a deficiency of elementary day school provision. Crookes Endowed School, built in 1791 and enlarged in 1880, could accommodate seven hundred children, but this was seen as insufficient in relation to a local population at the time of nearly 7,000 (due to rise to approximately 8,500 on completion of 350 houses then in the course of construction). It was felt that a new school in a central position was needed to serve children living in the area bounded by Hallam Gate, Hadfield Reservoir, School Road, Common Side, Bates Street, Heavy Gate Road to Ebenezer Chapel and the top side of Bole Hill quarries.

Patrick's letter and petition were presented to the School Board in May 1898, and three weeks later a deputation representing ratepayers and parents who had signed the petition attended a meeting of the Board's Buildings Committee. Here it was resolved that the committee recommend the purchase of two and a half acres of land at the junction of Western Road and Springvale Road. This purchase didn't proceed, and on 7th July 1898 the committee advised the purchase of a two-acre site in and extending eastward from Western Road, adjoining land owned by the Trustees of the late George Eadon, "for the purpose of erecting a Public Elementary School". The cost of purchasing the two plots of land on this site would be £2,500.

Later in July 1898 the Sheffield School Board invited the submission of competitive plans and designs for public elementary schools to be erected on sites at Western Road, Morley Street (Walkley) and Owler Lane (Grimesthorpe). In the case of Western Road, the new building was to accommodate a total of 750 or 800 children in ground floor classrooms, with a central hall capable of division. It was envisaged that this arrangement would be suitable for a Mixed Department of boys and girls under one headteacher, and a department for juniors and infants under another head.

The School Board's Buildings Committee advised in December 1898 that the plans submitted by the Sheffield firm of architects Holmes and Watson be accepted and adopted. Amended plans providing for 780 children, with the addition of a Cookery Centre and Manual Instruction Workshop, were accepted by the Board in March 1899. By the middle of June that year Sheffield School Board had received Education Department approval to borrow £12,700 for the cost of providing a new school on Western Road. Earlier that month the Buildings Committee had accepted the tender of Messrs. C. Murgatroyd and Son for £11,700 to build the school. Excavation work was underway by August 1899. Construction continued for the next twenty months and by May 1901 the Clerk of Works could report that "with the exception of a number of minor matters…this school is completed and ready for occupation".

The building, known today as Western Building, was opened by Sir Richard C. Jebb on the 6th May 1901. From the start capacity was an issue, and less than a week after opening Infant accommodation was increased from 180 places to 300, in five rather than three classrooms. The need for future expansion of the site had been anticipated some time earlier, as Holmes and Watson's original 1899 plan drawings show an area marked for "future extension". And by July 1902 Sheffield School Board's Buildings Committee was instructing Holmes and Watson to prepare plans for the erection of a separate Infants' department for 440 children. At this time the existing school building on Western Road was accommodating 605 mixed pupils and 329 infants. Whilst the school was clearly operating beyond the capacity originally envisaged by the School Board, a schools inspector could report in the September of that year that in the Mixed department "discipline is excellent and the instruction intelligent". Of the Infants' department, "a migratory population and frequent admissions are a difficulty. School is brightly conducted and systematic work is done".

William May's tender of £6,500 for the erection of the new Infants' department, known today as the Warwick Building, was accepted in December 1902. In January 1903 the Board of Education approved the plans and agreed to Sheffield School Board borrowing £7,200 to pay for the work. Excavations were complete and footings being laid by March of that year. The final stages of construction were reported to the city's Education Committee in May 1904, and the new department was formally opened on 13th June the same year by a former member of the by then defunct Sheffield School Board, Reverend J. W. Merryweather.

The third and final building on the Western Road site was opened in August 1915, to accommodate a Junior Mixed Department. Once again this was in response to a rise in pupil numbers. At this time over 160 Juniors were being taught in a temporary annexe (opened August 1913) in the nearby Springvale Road. In November 1915 the new building was requisitioned for use as a military hospital, with the boys temporarily accommodated in the Howard Road Wesleyan School, and the girls transferred to the Western Road Senior Department. By July 1916 it was being reported to the city's Education Committee that the boys' temporary accommodation was deemed too far from the children's homes, resulting in "considerable inconvenience". The existing arrangement was subsequently stopped and Crookes Congregational Church School rented as a Temporary School.

The Junior Mixed Department was formally opened by Miss E. Maud Maxfield on the 6th October 1919. From then until the mid-1960s this building, known today as Mona Building, accommodated Junior children, the Western Building the Seniors and the Warwick Building Infants.

In 1965 the Senior children moved to a new building in Crosspool (on the site of the current King Edward VII Lower School, Darwin Lane), and the Junior children moved into Western Building. A nursery opened in the Mona Building in 1968, and a year later further reorganisation saw the Infant School become a Nursery First, and the Juniors a Middle school. It was at this time that the name Westways was instituted, chosen by the then retiring head Miss M. Green. The Nursery First and Middle schools amalgamated in 1992 to become Westways Primary.