School History and Photos

A brief history of the schools on Sunnyside

The first building on the site was Newhall Council School built in 1894-5 catering for up to 660 pupils. The first headmaster was Mr W.W.Tunnicliffe who served until 1909. The Infant department was built directly behind the senior school at the same time and its first two heads were Miss Tunnicliffe and Miss Robertson, who both served in 1894. In 1914 a girls’ department was formed and Miss A.M.Worrall became the headmistress.

In 1936 Mr J.Belfitt became headmaster of the boys’ department and the school was known as Newhall County Secondary School. During the 2nd World War (1939-45) the senior school was taken over as a First Aid Post and the children had to share classrooms with the juniors.
Disaster struck the Senior School in 1956 when it suffered severe subsidence. At the time it was thought this was due to workings of the mine industry although in more recent years a fault line has been discovered running across the site.

A new senior school was built with the cost being partly met by the Coal Board. This became the “William Allitt School.” On January 5th 1959 the staff and pupils marched from the old school to the new school on a wet and snowy morning. The old school was demolished and became the playground for the Infant School.

As demand for places in the infant school increased temporary classrooms were erected in the school grounds. Over the years these became unsuitable for teaching and after a long campaign funding was eventually secured to build the new infant school. This campaign culminated in Mrs Wilson and Mrs Maciver, the then Head and Chair of Governors, going to the Houses of Parliament to present the case for a new school.

The new school, which took 12-18 months to build, was opened on November 7th 2001 by local MP Mark Todd.

Past Heads of the school: Miss Tunnicliffe, and Miss R.C.Robertson, both 1894, Miss J.A.Davies 1899, Mrs Tunnicliffe 1918, Miss Boyer 1930, Miss C.Belfitt 1932, Miss P.J.Belfitt 1932, Miss P.J.Perkins 1954, Mrs K.Holmes 1961, Miss Bailey 1970, Mrs Law 1979, Mrs Knight 1991, Mrs Wilson 1999, Mr Loftus 2005-present.

We hope you enjoy looking at the images below of our old school building, and the process of building our new one which opened in 2001.