Spondon House and West Park schools

[godderes]

:)I left Spondon House school in 1954 and moved away from the area. When I returned in the eighties the school appeared to have been demolished and somebody told me a health centre had been built in its place.
I gather a new school, which became West Park, was built on a site at the end of Park Road, that subsequently it was merged with a grammar school to become a comprehensive, closed in the early Sixties and was burned to the ground eight or nine years ago in an arson attack.
Can any one provide a more detailed picture of these events, as I am writing a little schooldays autobiog which is virtually complete and would like to update it with this info?

[melidenlad]

Well I can only tell you my story, I was at the old Spondon House from 1960 until 1964. The story is about West Park The school that nearly was not built.
In late 1962 the teacher that was supposed to take us for a lesson was unavailable due to illness, so we were sent to a class room on the second floor. An open coal fire burned in in the grate, as the school's central heating was a gravity system, and could not work on that floor.
When in came the then head master Mr Bell, by then he was a man in his early 60s about the age that I am now, but he looked a lot older, with one thing and another the war and that.
He told us the they were going to build a new secondary school, but we will have left school before it was built.
He then told us the history about the school, before the war the village school was in chapel street. For children from the age of 5 until 14, the local county grammar school was in Long Eaton and children would go by train from Spondon station to Trent junction and then walk to the Grammar school, as he put it Derby was on the other side of the Berlin wall, as though to speak. They had bought the old Spondon House private school and were running it as a secondary school it was long over due for modernisation, but the county had spent a lot of money on the New Spondon Park Grammar school, children from far away came to Spondon park, buses would come from Littleover & Breadsell, as the grammar had a much larger catchment area.
It had already been announced that the then Borough of Derby wanted to take over Spondon, so they had a plan B to build the new school in fields near Gypsy Lane between Borrowash & Draycott. However the Spondon site was preferred, because it was the county's intention to start comprehensive education in 1966. He said the final decision will be taken by the full council in Matlock later in the year. He said that the staff wanted to keep the old name of Spondon House as it was the name of the old private school and had tradition locally. He personally felt that Spondon would somehow escape becoming part of the Borough that time, but Chaddersden would be lost, well he was wrong about that.