91-StMsSch

St Michael’s CofE Primary School


Separate schools were set up in Steventon in the first half of the 19th century for boys and girls, the former in a large barn behind no 79 The Causeway, the latter in a purpose built building in Vicarage Road, still easily recognisable by its small belfry.


The two joined together when the present school was opened in 1864 and each pupil paid 2d a week (about the price of a pint of beer). This was just a few years before the Education Act of 1870, which established compulsory schooling and a national system of state education.


By the late 1870s there were about 140 pupils, {a large number for not a very big village); with a Headmaster, Assistant Teacher and Pupil Teacher. Walter Roberts, the most notable early Headmaster. held the post from 1877 to 1919 and established the school as one of the best in Berkshire, regularly commended by Inspectors as ‘excellent’.


It was reorganised as a primary school in 1950 and continues to flourish. In 2019 there were 186 pupils with a staff of about 35, most part time.

George Edward Street

(1824-81), the school’s first architect, was one of the leading practitioners of the Gothic school of architecture in Victorian England. He served as an assistant to George Gilbert Scott from 1844 and established his own practice in 1849. Most of his buildings are ecclesiastical, such as parts of Bristol and Dublin cathedrals, and many churches, but his masterpiece is the splendid Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand. He also wrote several influential books on architecture





                                            St Michael Church of England Primary School
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