Transcription of a Deed showing the purchase of the plot of land on which Park House was built for Philip Ellis.

John ELLIS, Philip ELLIS, Eli ELLIS of Ossett, Cloth Manufacturers the 1st Pt, John and Eli ELLIS 2nd Pt, Philip ELLIS 3rd Pt and Edmund TEALE of Ossett, Bookkeeper 4th Pt. of & concerning plots of land, mansion house, dwelling house, hereditaments etc comprising the 1st of 2 schedules.

Firstly, plot of land at Ossett 3a 2r 2and 1 third p. Bounded NW by Storrs Hill Rd W by Ossett Green S & E by other hereditaments of J, P & E ELLIS. Secondly that other plot of land cont. 3a 1r 21 and 1 third p. bounded NW by Storrs Hill Rd W & S ????? (illegible) partly by hereditaments belonging to John BRIGGS devisees & partly by other hereditaments belonging to J, P & E ELLIS on the SE by land & hereditaments described in the 2nd schedule & NE by land & hereditaments described in 2nd schedule and also that messuage/dwellinghouse with outbuildings upon the lastly described plot & now in the occupation of George HARRISON and John BEAUMONT all delineated on Plan (no plan survives).

Second Schedule plot of land cont 3a 1r 32p NW partly by hereditaments secondly described in First Schedule & partly by plot described on SW by other hereditaments to J, P & E ELLIS, SE side thereof by public footway and NE by land & hereditaments recently purchased by Philip ELLIS and also that MANSION HOUSE & outbuildings now in the course of erection (( “PARK HOUSE” ?)) on the said plot.

Secondly, all that other plot of land in Ossett cont. 1r 14 and 1third p NW by Storrs hill Rd SW by land & hereditaments secondly described in the first schedule on the SE by part of land & hereditaments lastly thereon before described & NE partly by land & property of David ELLIS & partly by land & hereditaments recently purchased by Philip ELLIS (Ref: 1866 ZH 95 109)

Transcribed by Joan P Smith

I’m uncertain where to put the following images and these recollections so I’ve added them here until I can find a better place for them. AMF 2024

“These were back to back houses. Two rooms down stairs, two rooms upstairs. I knew and visited the family in the first house at the back. This was in the 1940s. I think the houses at the back were called Ellis’s Yard. They had been built for the workers at Ellis’s Mill.” Christine jevins

“My grandma and grandad, John & Louisa Stringer, lived in the one with the half nets. The bath was in the kitchen and was covered by a folding table. The toilets were round the back. The actual address was Storrs Hill Road. Ellis’s Yard/Buildings was round the back. John was deaf. He was a regular in The Weavers.” Judith Lee

The cottages were demolished and replaced by Ellis’s Court. This, in turn, was demolished and the land is now a car park at the top of Ossett Academy (the former grammar school. )

EXCERPTS FROM VARIOUS GOVERNORS MEETINGS 1910

West Yorks Archive Service at the West Yorks History Centre, Wakefield (Ref: WMT/OS)

Collated by Joan P Smith

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Park House opened as a secondary school on Monday 24 September 1906 and remains an integral part of the school today.

Built in 1866 as a private house for Philip Ellis, at a cost of around £24,000 (now £1,419,100), the house was acquired by Ossett Corporation in 1904 for £2,500 (now almost 200k) and was initially used as a convalescent home for smallpox patients.

The County Council contributed a third of the cost of the school and half the cost of furnishing it. A further £2,500 was spent adapting the house into a school which the architect, FW Ridgeway of Dewsbury, said he’d had no easy task of delivering. He also said that the plan was not the original one that he advised the corporation to adopt and felt sure there would soon be a need to extend the school. He then presented a gold key to TW Bentley, the Chairman of the Education Committee, who performed the opening ceremony.

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Did You Know … this was the first school in the West Riding to accept both boys and girls!

Mayor JH Nettleton said the school was one of the healthiest and most pleasant in Yorkshire. I suppose it was a sharp contrast to the old school in the Market Place.

Cllr Bentley told the large crowd that in 1733 a fund was raised by public subscription and used to build the grammar school in the centre of the town; it opened two years later. In July 1754 the school was enlarged so that it could teach reading, writing and accounting. In 1805 it was enlarged again and in 1837 a two storey building was built.

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Stephen H Kendall, with his wife Emma and their four children, came to live in Ossett in around 1861 when he took a job teaching at the old Grammar School in the Market Place. In February 1880 Emma died and was swiftly followed only a few weeks later by their 21 year old son.

In 1881 Stephen was wanted on warrant for embezzlement of the Wakefield & Barnsley Banking Co. (Ossett’s first bank, which subsequently became Barclays.) Apparently he’d gone away with a lady and wasn’t expected to return. He had left household furniture to the value of £100 and also shares in The Halifax Building Society. I can find no evidence to suggest that he was ever caught!

For an extra fee the boys could learn Latin, Greek, German, chemistry, algebra and trigonometry. The assistant commissioner found that this was the only school in the West Riding to charge an extra fee for Latin and Greek. The headteacher, Mr Frankland, had to take all these lessons himself, as well as the ordinary school work. There were four boys taking Latin, one taking Greek and five taking chemistry. Mr Frankland must have had his work cut out for him!

Relying on private donations, the school struggled for many years and, as other schools around the country improved, it became obvious to all connected with it that the old grammar school was no longer sufficient for modern requirements.

When Hannah Pickard died in 1891 she left the Grammar School provision for two scholarships, totalling £4,200 (around £344,607 today), for the education of boys from Ossett. Here are some of the scholarship recipients from 1936.

In 1895 the Royal Commission of Education instructed a number of Assistant Commissioners to report on the condition of secondary schools around the country. The report on Ossett Grammar School wasn’t particularly favourable … Ossett was described as ‘a small manufacturing town devoted to the sorting and preparation of rags for the making of mungo’. It was said to be a ‘mean looking town‘ with no large mills but many small factories.

M. Wilson started Ossett Grammar School in September 1896. I wonder who he was. His sketch is a good likeness of the school.

Mr AP Lowrie, the assistant commissioner, described the Grammar School in the Market Place as a small building consisting of a house for the headmaster that had the ‘look of a regular workman’s house‘, and one dirty classroom. The fees were £3 a year for boys under 12 and £4 a year for those over 12. There were no girls in the school.

Mr Lowrie reported that the ‘stuffy, dilapidated, filthy room with old benches and inferior equipment’ was enough to see the building condemned and that ‘it was far better that this school should cease to exist’ and the boys be sent to Wakefield or Dewsbury.

It was decided that it was impossible to do anything with the existing school buildings and, when the 1902 Education Act reorganised the administration of education and placed it under the control of the county borough councils, Park House came into the hands of the corporation and became the solution to the problem. The old school was demolished in 1905 and for a while it was housed in the Central Baptist schoolroom in old Church Street.

Steve Wilson has written a detailed account of the history of the school. It’s available here: ossett.net

Shown here is the old stables block at Park House. By 1909 the former stables were being used as laboratories by students of the recently moved grammar school. Information and images supplied by Nev Ashby.

The architect of the new school, Mr JW Ridgeway, was right of course. The foundation stone of the Grammar School extension was laid on March 8 1927 by Viscount Burnham.

The stone was inscribed: “This stone was laid by the Rt. Hon. the Viscount Burnham, CH., LLD., on the 8th March 1927. Chairman, Councillor W Patterson; Headmaster, HG Chapman, Esq., MA, Litt. D.”

School houses that some of you will remember. But were you ever taught who they were named for?

Haigh /Pickard /Marsden /Bentley

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CLASS PHOTOS DONATED BY OSSETT ACADEMY (THE FORMER GRAMMAR SCHOOL) & MEMBERS OF OSSETT THROUGH THE AGES (OTTA)

If you’ve any names for anyone in these photos, do please get in touch!

Here is another old class at Ossett grammar School —-the Prep Dept in 1921. Mrs F Foster, of West Wells Crescent, recalled the following names.

Teachers: Miss Lumb and Miss Mellis.

Back Row: Louisa Helliwell, Marjorie Saville, Mary Glover, Louie Naylor, Mary Mitchell, Trevor Hainsworth. Second Row: Leslie Glover, Elwand Smith, Irene Wilby, Evelyn Longbottom, Marjorie Marshall, Mary Radley, Millie Beever, Ivy Mitchell. Third Row: Mary Hepworth, Mary Senior, Marjorie Wilby, Gladys Ward, Mary Leach, Connie Lawton, Lily Hepworth, Barbara Andrassy, Lydia Clark, Nancy Naylor. Front row: Sydney Smith, Oliver Myers, Stanley Wilson, John ‘Chippie’ Sayer, Arthur Armitage, Harry Smith, Horatio Mitchell.

CLASS UPPER III IN 1949 – THE FORM MISTRESS IS MISS JACKSON Back Row L to R: Gerald Flintoff; Brian Deighton; Arnold Rose; Ian Joseph Wilson; John Thewlis; Brian Crook; David Moore; Geoff Dodgson; Barry Watson; Brian Whittell. Middle Row L to R: Christine Lee; Joan Worth (Joan P Smith) ; Jeryl Boothroyd; Mary Dunn; Avril Summers; Shirley Gomersall; Mary Parish; Kaynita Dixon; Pat Milner. Front Row L to R: Brenda West; Doreen Walshaw; Daphne Cragg; Shirley Cairns; Anne Green; Mary Hutchinson; Una Radley; Barbara Schofield; Eileen Walmsley; Betty Brearley.

Ossett Grammar School 1st XI Hockey Team 1949/50. Back Row L- R: Shirley Farrar (Netherton), Dorothy Bartle (Ossett), Alma Fawcett (Ossett), Dorothy Firth (Ossett), Jean Birkenshaw, Enid Sykes? Front Row L- R: Audrey Illingworth, Patricia Andrassy (Horbury), Brenda White (captain)(Ossett), Ruth Nettleton (Ossett), Maureen Moore (Flockton)

OSSETT GRAMMAR SCHOOL STAFF 1952

Back Row L-R: Miss Patten; Miss Hemingway; Mr North; Mr Rablen; Mr Banks; Mr Hughes; Mr Lucas; Mr Atkinson; Mr Moore; Mr Yates; Mr Cathcart ; Mr Salter; Miss Longley & Miss Waddington. Front Row L-R: Mr Bailey; Miss Linley; Mr Parsons; Miss Mann; Mr Axford; Mr Akehurst; Miss A Robertson; Mr Van Der Veen; Mr Clark

Supplied by Lynne Drury Slater (my Mum: Maureen Edwards)

Above. Angela Pryce née Miller: “I attended Ossett Grammar School from 1955 to 1960: I have a very battered class photo from 1958. Class 4A, our Form Teacher was Mrs Booth. I am on the front row, first left.”

Ossett Grammar School, Upper 3, 1963. Teacher: Mr Moore. “Middle row left handside is Anne O’Neil, 5th from left Geoffrey Goldthorpe, next to the end on the right is Susan Atkinson, then Hilary Bowers. Front row 3rd from the left is Susan Armitage, Margaret Scargill is on Mr Moore’s right, with Jennifer Hill next to the end on the right.” Stephen Gardner.

Above: Ossett Grammar School, Form 3T in about 1969/70. “The teacher is Doctor Taylor. I am third from left at the back, next to Chris Codd. It was the first year it became Comprehensive but the classes were kept separate the first year. I think I know almost all the persons in the photo.” Martin Dearnley.

Left: I was in Mr McGrady’s class out in the hut at the edge of the playing field in the previous year, but then it was 3A, the middle class between Upper 3 and 3B. Mr McGrady’s beard was rather unusual and someone pinned a photograph of Harry Wheatcroft, the abundantly moustachioed rose grower on the classroom wall. He also bore a resemblance to the composer Mendelssohn, which was appropriate: he was the music teacher and his room was as far a possible away from the rest of the school, overlooking the cricket square and playing field. The hut was rather basic and I remember a drawing class in the adjoining classroom in the hut being interrupted briefly when a girl spotted a rat running along the heating pipes and disappearing into the wall cavity. Someone scratched ‘Hut 29’ into the paintwork by the door, a reference to the popular ITV series ‘The Army Game’, starring, amongst others, Alfie Bass as ‘Bootsie’ and Bill Fraser as Sergeant Major Snudge. My drawing shows my friend Derek Stefaniw in the hut with Irwin Freeth in the background. And that’s Park House visible through the window.

Richard Bell

Above: Miss Eve’s class, 1E, 1963. Names supplied by Richard Bell.
Back row from left: Peter Smith, Philip ‘Job’ Earnshaw, Michael Spurr (who would go on to play alongside Jules Holland!), Paul Webster (picture framer and one of the excavation volunteers at the big Sandal Castle dig in the 1970s), Teal, Adrian Littlewood, Derek Stefaniw (his dad, born in the Ukraine, had a mink farm at Crigglestone), Robert Burns (as the name suggests, he could play the bagpipes), Jones (?), Stephen Downing, Bradley,
Middle row: ?, Geraldine Bowers, Kathleen Simpson, Martin Tagg (music and electronics), Me, Marsden, ?, ?, ?, Ruth McCubbin (district nurse), Linda Parkin,
Front row: Bev White, Linda?, ? ?, Miss Eves (religious instruction teacher), ?, ?, Wendy Beaumont (a.k.a. Portia da Costa, our talented local erotic writer), Jeanette Berry.

Above: Ossett Grammar School, form 5A, 1966 or ’67. Information supplied by Richard Bell. Mr Beaumont, the woodwork teacher could turn out an impressive technical drawing, I remember one of a G-plan style sideboard that he’d designed himself when a student. Back row: lad from Shropshire who went off with a set of clubs during double sports period to play golf, Paul Copley, John Blackburn (philosophy at Lampeter), Derek Stefaniw, Keith Fernie (radio ham?), Irwin Freeth, Michael Hart, John Ogilvie, Geoff Howgate, Cuniffe, Peter Smith, ? Middle row: Geraldine Bowers, Susan Moran, Kathleen Simpson, John Butler, Wendy/Pamela Quick, Gillian Whittaker, LInda Cocking?, ? Front row: Judith Thompson (Dews), Joan Peel (infant teacher), Wendy Crowther, ?, ?, Mr Beaumont, ?, ?, ?, ?, Linda Greenwood.

Above: Susan Flintoff: This was 1968/1969 – the last OGS intake. I’m on back row.

Joan Foye: Looking at this class, I think I taught them Art on my final teaching practice, that would have been school year 69/70 and I think they were in the second form! I recognise some of the names.

Information from Catherine Neild. Back row L to R Anne Marie Caunce, Sandra Hargreaves, Ann Barker, Karen Dunford, Gail Allott, Janet Gill, Susan Flintoff, John Crook, Patrick Bonner, Robert Audsley, Michael Brough, Richard Beaumont, Nigel Booth. Middle Row Karen Emmett, Suzanne Cant, Catherine Driver, Beverley ?, Christine Bowling, Jane Daltry, Peter Barker, ?, John Barker, ?, Martin Brummitt. Bottom row – ? , Beverley Embleton, Julie Breeze, Dilys Butler, Bill Hughes, Michael Beaumont, John Clegg, Michael Crawford, ?