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Ham Road School

Ham Road School ghost montage c1905 / 2000 ©Roger Bateman

The school was built in 1875 as a Board School in Ham Road for an estimated attendance of 240. It was later enlarged in 1896 and 1907. By 1904 attendance was 557, in three departments, to which a junior mixed department was added in 1913. The school was reorganized, in partly new buildings, in 1915, the older children going to Victoria Upper Council school. The Headmaster from 1901 until 1915, Oswald Ball (1871-1954) moved to become headmaster at Victoria Road. Ham Road School ceased to be a school in 1938, when there was an attendance of 551 in junior mixed and infant departments, to be replaced by schools in the newly enlarged Victoria Road Schools.

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In Memory of a French Sailor

In the south east corner of Mill Lane Cemetery, overlooking The Meads and backing onto a spur of Greenacres, is the grave of a French sailor formerly of the SS Lutetia, who died in 1919. There are no other gravestones near to this isolated stone cross marker, giving it rather a sad and lonely appearance, perhaps reflecting the nature of this sailor’s death, a young man from another country who lost his life under tragic circumstances.

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