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The Whitehead Brothers built Holly Mount School in 1839 in order to educate their workers' children. According to David Whitehead's diary, it was the first day school in the area.
Costing £1000 to build and equip, the school was lit by gas lamps and heated by hot water.
The building incorporated a clock tower with five faces |
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Holly Mount school and the clock tower
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The Whitehead Brothers could have given the children free education, but realising that what is given for nothing is often undervalued, the pupils were asked to pay the normal school fee of 2d per week (less than one penny today).
David Whitehead wrote in his diary (1):
"We also felt anxious that the rising generation of work people should form the habits of economy and of saving a part of their earnings when young, and with a view to induce them to do so we established a Provident Trust, for the benefit of certain scholars attending Holly Mount School.
All children who came to this school paid for their own education…but we signified to the above trust that we would pay over to the agent of this trust all monies for schooling by all scholars attending Holly Mount School as belonged to families some part of whom are in our employ…The trust were to put all such monies into the savings bank, and when, or as each child became twenty one years old to have the monies at their credit with interest paid to them.
There is real pleasure in spending a little money and doing good this way" (1)
The school consisted of two rooms, one for males and one for females, and a committee room. Two teachers, a man and a woman were obtained from the Borough Road School in London as the brothers were "anxious to give the best possible education to the working class, and particularly to our own work people".
In 1842, the writer, W. Cooke Taylor gave the following description of Holly Mount School:
"The School attached to the factory was one off the most elegant and convenient buildings I have ever seen devoted to the purposes of education: it was well ventilated, and furnished the best apparatus for being lighted with gas and heated with warm water… The Messrs Whitehead are very properly strict in enforcing this weekly payment: they deem it of importance to impress continually on the minds of parents the moral duty of providing for the education of their children" (2)
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It is not certain when the building ceased to be used as a school.
It was later used as a car showroom and repair shop and in 1932 became the Astoria Dance Hall.
The Astoria was demolished in the 1960s to make way for the by-pass. |
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Holly Mount school used as the Astoria Dance Hall
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In May 1979, the arch-shaped date stone from the demolished school was lowered into place beneath the clock tower in "Old Fold Gardens" |
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Old Fold Gardens
All that remains of Holly Mount School
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The date stone from the school
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1."The autobiography of David Whitehead of Rawtenstall", published by the Helmshore Local History Society, 2000
2. W. Cooke Taylor "Notes of a tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire " Letter IV Rossendale Forest 1842 |
