Gaskell-street Board School

The New Gaskell Street Board School - The plans of the new Board School Gaskell-street having now been approved by the Education Department the contracts for the erection will shortly be let. The architect is Mr. Haselden, and the plans show that the new school will be of plain Gothic design, the structure being of brick, with stone dressings. There are two departments, the mixed and the infants. The entrance to the mixed department for boys is from Wallace-street, through the playground, which is the south side; the girls and infants’ playground being on the north-west of the site, and the entrance from Gaskell-street. The mixed department consists of hall, with balcony on four rides. There are three pairs of classrooms on each of the two floors, each pair consisting of a large and small classroom, the former accommodating sixty and the latter thirty children. There are also cloak rooms, lavatories, master and mistresses’ rooms, and other apartments. The infants’ department will be one storey building, with four classrooms pairs, accommodating sixty and thirty children each, with mistresses’ room, pupil teachers’ cloak room, etc., and in the large school room provision has been made for a gallery for the infants. [Bolton Evening News - Saturday 9 July 1881 page 3] 

GASKELL STREET BOARD SCHOOL AND THE NEVILLE JONES’ MEMORIAL SCHOOL - A paragraph in our Conservative contemporary, describing some festivities at the opening the Neville Jones’ Jubilee Schools,” contains an attempt to compare the relative coat of the erection of those school buildings with that of  “the palace  in Gaskell Street,” regarding which Mr. Haselden, architect, writes as follows; As the term “Palace in Gaskell Street" is no doubt intended to refer the Gaskell Street Board Schools, o! which building I have the honour to be the architect, I wish to give you some exact Information which will enable you and those of your readers, who know the other schools and the coat of their erection, to make the comparison with greater accuracy. You state that the cost of building the Jubilee Schools is £5 per head, and that the “Palace” £13 per child. I do not, of course, know anything of the cost of the Jubilee Schools, but I do know the cost of the erection of Gaskell Street Board Schools will not exceed £11 10s. per child accommodated, and this without reckoning any portion of the large central hall part the accommodation. Tho sum named also includes— 1st, the purchase of land and ground rent; 2nd, the purchase and removal the Wesleyan School building previously built on the land; 3rd, the paving streets, law charges, etc. These items amount to a sum nearly approaching £3,000. The complete furnishing of the building is also included. Does the amount of £5 per head, as the cost of the Jubilee Schools, include the purchase of land, paving of streets, and furnishing the building?  If the accommodation of Gaskell Street Board Schools were calculated the rate of 10 square feet floor space per child (I presume your estimate of the Jubilee Schools is taken in this way), the capacity of the former would be 1476 children, and the cost about £8 12s. per child accommodated. Spacious playgrounds are also provided, which I think is not the case at the Jubilee Schools. My object in  giving you these particulars is not to depreciate the schools, the opening which your paragraph announces, but point out the real cost of the Gaskell Street Board Schools in the first place, and also to protest against unexplained comparison between schools, one of which is adapted to the latest requirements of a first-rate elementary school, approved by the Education Department; the other being a school for the ordinary Sunday and mission purposes, and a building the plans of which would have required great alteration to meet the views of the architect of the Education Department as a projected public elementary school. I wish to convey no reflection upon the designer of that building, but simply to point out that the building has been planned for purposes of a less expensive character as to accommodation the other schools. The provision of 10 square feet per child, and the necessary height of rooms, is not now considered sufficient by the Education Department for the accommodation to be allowed; the arrangement of seats and desks, accordance with certain fixed rules, the real basis calculation. The separate door*, passages, and staircases for boys and girls, from each classroom and schoolroom to the respective playground and offices, which rigidly enforced, occasions considerable extra expense in construction. I am satisfied that the cost of Gaskell Street Board Schools will bear comparison with that of any schools which have been built in Bolton at any time, and the money has been spent in providing healthy and convenient accommodation for the children, excluding all features mere ornament or effect. [Bolton Evening News - Saturday 16 December 1882 page 4]

Reference    Bolton Evening News - Saturday 9 July 1881 page 3
Reference    Bolton Evening News - Saturday 16 December 1882 page 4