Middle Street Primary School

THE HISTORY OF OUR SCHOOL & LOCAL AREA
THE FIRST 100 YEARS 1805-1905 Middle St. School 1805-1905 and its author -Mr G.Haffenden -Headmaster 1905
Click on the pictures below to see excerpts from this history of the first 100 years of Middle Street School :
In the mid-19th Century the school was very much run on the schooling system created by Joseph Lancaster. Click the picture to find out about Lancaster and read his booklet on 'The British System of Education'.	Headteachers were required to keep a daily log-book of events and incidents. Click the book for a sample of items recorded in the Middle Street log-book for 1869-1902.
THE SECOND 100 YEARS 1905-2005 Click on the pictures to view photographs from the second hundred years of the school's history: Pre-1920s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s & 70s 1980s & 90s
BICENTENARY ACTIVITIES & CELEBRATIONS Activities and celebrations linked to our bicentenary in 2005:
Click the picture to see some of the models of people and incidents from the first 100 years of our school's history that our children made for display in Brighton museum.	Click to see the models and other artefacts on display at our 'Old School' exhibition at Brighton museum. For Brighton & Hove Museum's record of the exhibition- click here
Click for photos of our Bicentenary Celebration Day.	Click for press coverage of our celebrations.
Year 4 children also produced an animation of some of the above characters and incidents. Click to see the video.	Click for photos & video of Year 4's as Victorian day.
Test Yourself! When you've read all about the history of the school - test yourself by playing the 'Fling the Teacher' game. Change the teacher's face. Answer all 15 questions correctly and catapult the teacher through the air! Click the picture above.	Children on CBBC TV For a video clip of four of our children talking to the editor of the Reader's Digest book (shown below) on the CBBC TV channel click here
Whole School Photograph To celebrate the bicentenary we took a photograph of everyone in the school.	Old Pupil Memories Read some fascinating memories of 'old pupils' here For interviews with ex-pupils from the 1930s & 40s click the play buttons below (interviews are by Robyn, Stanley, Esme & Chloe and last 15-25 minutes each). Joyce Hill Pat Sprinthall Peter Guy Sheila Dyer For a transcript of sections of the interviews click here
Uncovering two hundred years of a seaside school This double-page spread on our school history appears in 'The Story of Where You Live' published by The Reader's Digest.
MORE SCHOOL HISTORY
150th Anniversary Click for details of our 150th anniversary (1955).	School Buildings Middle Street School 1905 Click to see more photographs and drawings of the building over the years.
Ghosts near our school! Here is Kai's description of the Ghost Walk in the Lanes around our school. Click the Play button-	The Green Man A Brighton character that the first pupils at the school in 1805 would certainly have been familiar with was 'The Green Man of Brighton', who promenaded the seafront and Steyne near to the school. Click the picture for more details.
HISTORY OF THE SURROUNDING AREA Click on the pictures:
The sea-front end of Middle Street in 1833	Historic pictures of Brighton
Animated Postcards of Brighton	Historic maps of Brighton
See how many people lived in the houses opposite our school in 1891, and what sort of jobs they had,	Postcards by Flora White
HISTORY OF BRIGHTON - WEBSITE LINKS
Brighton & Hove in Pictures	My Brighton & Hove
History of Photography in Brighton & Hove	Old Sussex Mapped
Brighton & Hove - Black History	Brighton's Architecture
Romans in Sussex	The Regency Town House
An education pack based on the QueenSpark books archive	A vision of Britain through Time - Brighton
A2A - Access to Archives allows you to search archives held throughout England. For example searching with 'Middle Street school' as Keywords and 'East Sussex Record Office' as 'location' brings up several results, including: Middle Street County Primary School, Brighton Photographs FILE - Middle Street School Boys' Brigade - ref. E/SC/24/7/1 - date: 1889 FILE - Middle Street School Old Boys' Club group photographs, 1909-1913 and cameos of founders, 1913 - ref. E/SC/24/7/2-9 - date: 1909-1913 Other records FILE - Middle Street School roll of honour - ref. E/SC/24/12/1-8 - date: 1914 FILE-List of Middle Street School records and notes for the history of the school - ref. E/SC/24/20 -date: 20th century
Historical Directories Try using this site to search old trade directories for details of particular streets. For example the Boyce's Street entry from Kelly's Directory of Kent, Surrey & Sussex, 1891 reads:
Google Book Search The book search on Google lets you search the growing archive of complete books and texts. For example here are links to a few with references to Brighton from the mid 19th century: The Spas of England, and Principal Sea-bathing Places - 1841 - has a chapter on Brighton Memoirs, Letters, and Comic Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, of the Late James Smith - 1840 - has a poem about Brighton The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge - 1843 - describes Brighton at the time The Elements of materia medica and therapeutica. v.1, 1854-57 - suitability of Brighton for various types of invalid