Notes from Log Book in Teesside Archives

The  school opened in 1904 having been bought by West Hartlepool Education Authority from the Wesleyans . It had been the Wesleyan Higher Grade School and in 1904 it was in some way renovated.

In 1904, there were 345 on roll. It was a fee paying school  and the log book of 1904 says:

Grants @ 22shillings a head = £379.10s

Cookery 88 @ 4 shillings= £7.12s

Reports by inspectors of 1915 call the school ' a fee paying council school'

Nov 28th 1916  school closed owing to zeppelin raid which affected several people

July 1923, 379 on roll-- 15 boys and 8 girls left for Elwick Road and 12 boys and 6 girls to seconary and high schools

Inspection of 1938 said 'premises not good, classrooms uneven, playground small, offices (toilets?)unpleasant, old fashioned type with no individual flush, no indoor sanitary provision for staff. Numbers are decreased and it would be an advantage if thet were somewhat further reduced so that there need only be one class in the most northerly room at present divided by partition providing two very small teaching areas'

Sep 8th 1939, an evacuation party took 103 children to Saltburn. The teachers taking them were Miss Coldray, Miss Lincoln and Miss Pinkney(later head of Rossmere Infants')

In Oct 1939 there were 82 boys, 63 girls and 70 infants

Jan 1940, the school was taken over by the military. Staff were deployed and children were transferred to the following schools;

Lister Street 145

Oxford Street 7

Lynnfield 28

Jesmond Road 1

Dyke House 1

A picture of the Boys at Avenue Road, corner of Thornton Street.

Can any one advise the names of the team!

Victory Square can be seen in the right distance where the trees are.

Thornton Street runs right to left beyond the Coop Dairy on the right.

Just beyond Thornton Street, the higher building on the left had originally been Avenue Road School and then the Technical School Annexe.

The photo was from a photographic record of the Central Area of West Hartlepool prepared in 1955/6 at the request of the Town Planning and Redevelopment Committee 'in the hope that it will be of interest to future generations of West Hartlepool'  

The record focuses on areas which were within the next ten years to be completely redeveloped following The Max Lock Plan. It was compiled by WL Taylor and photographs developed by Thomas Clarkson Chemist of Tower Street.

Edward Mellanby was born in West Hartlepool the youngest of six children whose father, John Mellanby, was a manager of a shipyard for the Furness and Withy Shipbuilding Company. Edward was educated first Avenue Road School in West Hartlepool and then at Barnard Castle School where he showed both great athletic and scholastic prowess.  In 1902 he left for Cambridge where he studied physiology. Between 1905 and 1907 he became a research student of Emmanuel College and published his first paper in 1908.  Edward then went to St Thomas’s Hospital in London to do his medical training and was a demonstrator in physiology from 1909 to 1911. In 1913 he took on the role of lecturer and later became Professor of Physiology at King’s College for Women. In 1920 he became the first occupant of the Chair of Pharmacology at the University of Sheffield while, at the same time, he was appointed Honorary Physician at the Sheffield Royal Infirmary. In 1933 Edward was made Secretary to the Committee of Privy Council for Medical Research and Secretary of the Medical Research Council for whom he worked until his retirement in 1949.

During the 16 years he worked for the Medical Research Council he also carried on his own personal research at his laboratory in Sheffield where he studied the science of nutrition. This included nutrition deficiencies and the effects of various toxins in foods and the benefit of vitamins, mainly on the once common disorder of rickets.  His findings into experiments with dogs who were given a restricted diet and kept indoors developed rickets but were then fed cod liver oil and recovered. These findings were published in the medical journal Lancet in 1919 and led to the discovery that rickets was caused by a lack of sunlight which resulted in a deficiency of vitamin D. He also studied the effect of alcohol on the brain and his findings became known as the Mellanby Effect. His work in this and other areas saw him become one of the founders of the Nutrition Society.

When Edward died suddenly of heart failure in 1955 there was great accolade for his achievements during his lifetime. He was knighted in 1937 and gained many letters after his name, GBE, KCB, MD, FRCP and FRS. He also could boast numerous publications which contributed greatly to the understanding of the importance of nutrition.

Donated by Richard Mellanby BSc BVMS PhD DSAM DipECVIM-CA MRCVS

Avenue Road Wesleyan School (later Avenue Road School) appears to have been one of some repute as the following are listed in WR Owen's 1913 'Remeniscences of Education in West Hartlepool' and this is not the case in other schools.

'Many Scholars of this school have done exceedingly well in after life. The following are a few examples;

Rev. Salton (American Methodist Church)

Joseph Mace (Wesleyan Minister Edinburgh)

Charles Johnson (Wesleyan Missionary West Africa)

Prof Alexander Mellanby Dsc. (Secretary of engineering Glasgow University)

Prof. John Mellanby MD Bsc etc.(Medical Research Singapore)

Prof. Edward Mellanby MD BSc (Medical Research Cancer ,London) Long after the 1913  book was written, he was the man who discovered Vitamin D during his research into rickets in 1919 and he was knighted in 1937

Frank Lund, H. Pearson. J. Pearson, CH Ford  all shipowners

F W Lewis    (director and London manager of Furness, Withy and Co)

R Coleman (NER Estate agent and councillor)

J Groves (Chief Government  official in China)

J Gordon (Judge in Calcutta)

Arnold Branson (Gas and Water engineer and manager)

Robert and TA Jobson (shipbuilders)

G Wheelwright (Contractor  Australia)

J Coombes (leather manufacturer Lincoln)

Frankland (millionaire meat packer)

Thos Liddle JP (Board of Trade)

James Boanson (master painter)

Fenwick (leading tenor St Paul;s Cathedral)

F Gordon (professor and tenor London)

Mr Dunbavand the head teacher was headmaster in 1871 and at the time of the 1913 book and obviously enjoyed a lot of success. The school was fee paying and possibly favoured by the more affluent members of the town.