Purchase By Wiltshire County Council and Use As A School
Wiltshire County Council purchased Southbroom House in 1925, together with 7 acres (28,000 m2) of grounds. The house was adapted as a senior school for children over the age of eight in the southern part of the town. The adjacent Heathcote House, formerly the private Devizes Grammar School from 1874 to 1919, was used as the Headmaster's residence of the new school, and in 1929 a large classroom at the rear was adapted as a Domestic Science Room. By 1930, there was a 'housecraft centre' near the school and a large garden for the pupils to work in. In 1936, a new block was added to the Heathcote House section to form a Handicraft Centre and Science Laboratory. The school continued to expand and in 1937 a kitchen and canteen were opened to provide hot dinners for the children.
Early in the Second World War, the school's buildings were converted into a reception and dispersal centre for evacuees. The Devizes Day Nursery was built in the grounds as an emergency measure; this became redundant in 1947 and provided extra accommodation for the school. In 1949, the school became a secondary modern with the name of Southbroom Secondary School. In 1950, there were 452 pupils and this rose to 590 aged between 8 and 15 by 1954. The school was considered too small and was enlarged in 1956, and again in 1964. In 1969 Southbroom Secondary School was merged with the Devizes Grammar School to form Devizes Comprehensive School.
As of 1980, Southbroom House was used mainly for school staff offices and the staff common room.
Read more about this topic: Southbroom House
Famous quotes containing the words purchase, county, council and/or school:
“Riches are valuable at all times, and to all men; because they always purchase pleasures, such as men are accustomed to, and desire: Nor can any thing restrain or regulate the love of money, but a sense of honour and virtue; which, if it be not nearly equal at all times, will naturally abound most in ages of knowledge and refinement.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Anti-Nebraska, Know-Nothings, and general disgust with the powers that be, have carried this county [Hamilton County, Ohio] by between seven and eight thousand majority! How people do hate Catholics, and what a happiness it was to show it in what seemed a lawful and patriotic manner.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“And so they have left us feeling tired and old.
They never cared for school anyway.
And they have left us with the things pinned on the bulletin board.
And the night, the endless, muggy night that is invading our school.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)