LIFE began for Millbrook School in 1938, although there had already been a privately owned school on the Green Lane site beforehand.
As a mixed school, Millbrook accepted boys and girls aged eight to 14 years old. Aside from the core curriculum, the boys were taught woodwork, agriculture, and husbandry, while the girls were taught cookery and needlework.
Evacuee children from Portsmouth were accepted at the school during the Second World War.
Some did return home, but others were not so lucky, including Ada Burley and Dorothy Wood, both aged 12, who are remembered among the school’s evacuees as having been killed during those dark days.
As Millbrook’s new housing developments grew, Millbrook Secondary Boys’ School and Millbrook Secondary Girls’ School both became secondary modern schools.
The boys’ school was located on the existing Green Lane site while the girls’ school was in a purpose-built glass building fronting Lower Brownhill Road.
There was an invisible line patrolled by staff that boys and girls were prohibited from crossing.
Further improvements were made to the boys’ school after the girls transferred, including a woodworking, metalworking, and technical drawing room.
During the 1970s and 1980s, there were 1,100 students enrolled but by the early 1990s, numbers started to fall and the Lower Brownhill Road site was sold off and the Green Lane school extended - resulting in the merging of the two schools.
There has always been a farm on site at the school, which began as a pig farm and later became Down to Earth Community Farm.
Since 2008 the school site has acted as the lower school for Oasis Academy Lord’s Hill.
Share your memories of Millbrook School by emailing ian.crump@dailyecho.co.uk .
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