A new Secondary School for Castle Bromwich

‘Castle Bromwich Park Hall Secondary Modern School’ was opened by Warwickshire County Council on 1 May 1951 with just 309 children and ten members of staff. (Prior to this, senior children had attended what is now Castle Bromwich Junior School). The population of Castle Bromwich is now some 12,000, but in the early 50s new housing developments on the Hall estate and around Marlborough Road and Wykham Road were only just beginning. Much of Castle Bromwich was still agricultural at this time.

The new school stood in open countryside and was designed as separate boys’ and girls’ schools. However, it was initially co-educational as only the boys’ half had been completed. The girls’ school which mirrored the boys’ was to open two years later.

The school’s name was taken from the nearby manor house of the Arden family. An ancient Anglo-Saxon family, their first Park Hall was a moated manor house whose site now lies beneath the junction of Parkfield Drive and Faircroft Road. The dried-up moat was still visible in the fields at the time the school was built. A new hall was built about 1589 close to the River Tame. Rebuilt in brick in the late 17th century, although dilapidated, it still stood when the school opened. The remaining buildings were demolished about 1970. Park Hall’s school badge is a simplified version of the Arden family’s coat of arms.

The first headmaster to be appointed by the County Council was George Waite, a stern but much-loved head who had served his time in the Army during the war. He later recollected the state of the school when it first opened. Although the boys’ block was supposedly finished, there were still workmen everywhere, the drive up to the school was unfinished, the hall floor had not been laid, corridor tiling was incomplete and the gym was only partially built. The playing fields resembled a ploughed field.

In 1953 the girls moved into their building which was then known as Park Hall Girls’ School. The new headmistress was Dorothy Evans who remained at the school until her retirement in 1971 when the boys’ and girls’ schools were amalgamated as Park Hall Comprehensive School.

In 1974 reorganisation local government brought the school under the control of Solihull Metropolitan Borough.

In 2009 Park Hall School moved into a new £27million building and became Park Hall Academy. Park Hall has extensive playing fields and the new school was built on the fields nearer to the M6 motorway. Pupils and staff were then able to move immediately from the old into the new building. The old building was then demolished and most of that site turned back into playing fields.

Art work

Two relief panels which were formerly mounted on the old Park Hall building have now been reinstalled by the entrance to the new building. Designed by Midlands’ sculptor Walter Ritchie, they represent sporting achievements but have an implicit theme of striving to do one’s best.

In 2011 the Academy, on the occasion of the school’s 60th anniversary celebrations, a new sculpture was unveiled. Designed by a student of Walter Ritchie, Midlands’ artist Steve Field’s piece represents the school’s four houses; Bradford, Spitfire, Jaguar and Arden. It was unveiled in the presence of former headmistress, Miss Evans.