St John's Church of England School 1896-1967

St John’s origins lay in Sunday schools. In the 1890s nearly 900 Anglican children received religious instruction in various rented rooms.  In 1895 the vicar, the Rev H Cooper Smith, appealed for financial help to construct a purpose built school.  He soon received two anonymous gifts, one of £1,500, the other of £25 from a working man who had saved all his life for a holiday but chose instead to donate to the cause.

The site of the ancient Hospital of St John at the bottom of Church Street was acquired and phased construction of the New Sunday Schools was begun to accommodate 245 infants and 200 mixed children.  Completion cost £5,567, all raised by subscription.  Canon Hussey opened the school on 1 December 1900 and said that the high standard of the buildings would satisfy the most determined Inspector or the most ‘red-tapey Government official’.  The rooms were also used on weekdays and in the evenings for bible classes, temperance, parochial and diocesan meetings.  The name was changed to St John’s in respect of the ancient Hospital.  

By 1902 the Board Schools (opened in 1888) were oversubscribed and St John’s became a day school.  Extra classrooms were built and in 1907 it was renamed the Basingstoke Church of England School.  Overcrowding was a constant problem and reached a peak in 1909 with 243 infants, sometimes 90 in one class with one teacher, and 242 older children.

Although the Local Authority ran the school it received no grants or aid and remained the Borough’s only Church of England voluntary school.  By 1923 a third of pupils were Non-conformist and Roman Catholic children were admitted up until 1926.  Evacuees from two Catholic Portsmouth schools were received in the Second World War.

The school failed to meet required post war building standards.  New schools were built in town and pupil numbers at St John’s fell.  Road restructuring connected with the London overspill development, resulted in the closure and demolition of St John’s in 1967; most children transferred to the new St John’s Church of England (Aided) Primary School in Kingsmill Road.