St Johns Primary & Nursery School

The school was built in red brick with long classrooms on two floors, space for a small office, and a cellar below the level of the pavement. The floor and the steps to the cellar are stone and very well worn and cold. The cellar is made up of several rooms, one of which was the bath house. Two cast iron baths were placed in the room, with one on either side of the space. One bath is still in place today with the ornamental feet still intact. The bathroom would have been very cold and steamy as there was no window for ventilation. Two children at a time, would have had a bath in the cellar at school, as the small terraced houses in what is now the playground, had no bathrooms. They would have used carbolic soap and scrubbing brushes. Delousing was normal and bathing was not so common then. A fire, fed by coal, heated the water.