Schools – copy

Schoolhouse S.S. No. 3 (Town Hall)

Building:  Classroom - Town Hall
Pupils:  about 100
Seating: long wooden benches
Time span: 1852 to 1853/54
Marked D on site map below

• Bolton’s school age population which included children from the surrounding farm community grew rapidly starting in the late 1840s and exploded in the 1850s

• • Older students were accustomed to helping with younger children.  This became a necessity with a rapidly growing student population which varied by farm season.  There was only one teacher

• Sometime in the mid-1850s, a classroom of students was accommodated in the Town Hall of the day on the south side of King Street West.  See 1854 map

• • The proximity of the school to the Town Hall perhaps made this workable with only one teacher
  • overcrowding impacted the teacher’s ability to teach and the students’ opportunity to learn
  • There is mention of a ‘private school’ operating in the same Town Hall around 1848. This may have been an offshoot of overcrowding in the earlier small mud-brick schoolhouse

Until 2013, the existence of a school along King Street West had gone unreported and had been long forgotten until a combination of unconnected events resulted in some 1850s Bolton history being unearthed.  The events included:

• • 2 demolitions
  • identifying Bolton’s oldest building as it was being demolished
  • discovering a missing map
  • Finding an old glass negative
  • Realizing that two 1848 land transactions were recorded on Conc 6, lot 9 West  instead of Lot 9 East (in the heart of Bolton)

• This map extract is from a larger 1854 map discovered in the attic of an old house on James Street during a demolition in 2013.   

• • The map shows a school on King Street West

The Evolution of Schools 1860s

1 room Timberframe Schoolhouse
Converted from Temperance Hall 
Built by: John Helliwell circa 1854
Pupils:  over 200
Seating: desks
Time span: 1860 to 1874
Marked E on site map below

Temperance Hall Schoolhouse (S.S. No. 3)

• A large timber frame building at the corner of Victoria Street and John Street was built sometime between 1855 and 1857 by John Helliwell.  In 1858, it was purchased by the Temperance Society and was referred to locally as the Temperance Hall
• In 1860, after only two years,  the Temperance Society was convinced to sell the Hall to the School Board to provide a larger space for the school
• Thomas Elliott continued as the headmaster and by 1865 Miss Mary Foster was hired as an assistant teacher for the over 200 students housed in one classroom
• The McTavishes, father and daughter, became the headmaster and assistant teacher later in the 1860s
• An additional classroom space was created but overcrowding continued

The Evolution of Schools from 1874

2 storey, four room Schoolhouse
Construction: Brick
Built by: George Watson
          Charles Longbottom
Pupils:  initially 142
         off season over 200
Seating: desks
Time span: 1874 to 1968
Marked F on site map below

Bolton Public School (S.S. No. 3)

• The student overcrowding issue was resolved with the construction of Bolton Public School on Albert Street in 1874
• The magnificent building was built in the Victorian Gothic style of the day.  Contrasting red and buff coloured brick for the building was produced nearby at Norton’s Brickworks

• Mr. S.B. Westervelt became the principal and was supported by 2 teachers

• • A full list of students, teachers and principals can be found in the book: Bolton School Days by Murray Hesp

• Continuation classes began in 1910 which caused space constraints.  To alleviate the overcrowding, an elementary school classroom was set up in the Creamery for several years. 

• • Blackboards were discovered behind partitions when the creamery was torn down in 1967

• Two more classrooms were added to Bolton Public School in 1923 and another two in 1957
• In the early 1960s, the school was named James Bolton Public