September means a fresh new academic year for students across the globe, creating the perfect opportunity to highlight some new additions to our social history collection. In 2023, Museum & Art Swindon received a donation of items relating to Park Grammar and Commonweal schools. They included school caps, ties, scarves, badges, magazines, and an admission letter. The donor of the items, Jonathan Harris, attended both schools in the 1960s.
Scarf from Park Grammar
Park Grammar was the third grammar school to be built in Swindon. It covered the eastern side of the town, and the London overspill estates of Walcot, Park North and Park South. Meanwhile Commonweal served the southern Swindon and its surrounds, and Headlands served the north.
The Park Grammar admission letter sent out to parents highlighted the complexities expected with the opening of a new school:
"As this is a new school opening on 29th August, 1960, there will obviously be many problems from your point of view as well as from ours. In order to give me the opportunity of meeting you and discussing any queries you may wish to raise, I should like to extend a cordial invitation to you to attend a parents’ meeting to be held…in the Hall of the Commonweal Grammar School, on Friday 24th June, at 7pm".
Cap from Park Grammar
Park Grammar opened in September 1960, but not quite in time for the new academic year. The building was ready two weeks late, so some students were housed at Commonweal Grammar and King William Street. Harris reflects that the building left much to be desired with, for example, south-facing and a glass front creating unbearably hot conditions in the summer.
The school, if not the building, would be short lived. As a grammar school it was part of the tripartite secondary education system which included Grammar, Secondary Modern and Technical Schools. In the early 1960s, Swindon Borough Council decided to move away from the tripartite system and toward Comprehensive secondary education system. In 1964 Park Grammar became Park Senior High School, and from 1966-2000 it ran as Oakfield School.
The items donated by Harris reflect the fleeting history of Park Grammar, and its place in Swindon’s postwar growth and changing education system.
It is fitting that Harris’ mother kept hold of so many items from her son’s school days, as he would go on to have a rich career in education. As Assistant Director of Education in Wiltshire, he was responsible for land acquisition and new school buildings across the county and in particular in West Swindon and the Northern Sector. Harris also held posts as the Director of Education, Arts and Libraries in Cornwall, Chief Executive of the English Schools Foundation Hong Kong, and Chairman of the Cornwall Sports Partnership.
School caps from Park and Commonweal are currently on display in the Origins Galleries, along with the admission letter.
