The Holy Family School
The local Catholic school
Nib West
Not all the schools on the estate were numbered. The Catholic school on the estate, located in Montacute Road, was called The Holy Family School and provided a mixed infant, junior and senior education. Being a faith school, its catchment area was wide ranging, including Sutton, Mitcham, Cheam, Worcester Park and many other places. In some instances it provided a secondary school facility for schools elsewhere that only provided a primary education. This total provision was in due course modified.
A school group around 1948
Nib West
Unlike many local schools, it was without a games field. At one time it used the private field belonging to Hill House. This was in Middleton Road and ran from Bishopsford Road traffic lights, where the gated road to Hill House was, towards Robertsbridge Road. This ground was eventually built on to provide extra housing causing the school to use Moreton Green on the corner of Malmesbury Road and Middleton Road. The school eventually acquired the ground adjacent to the church and on the corner of Lillleshall Road and Bishopsford Road which gave it a permanent facility which is still there today. For many years this piece of ground had been unfenced and considered by most local people as a piece of waste but was obviously owned by someone.
During the war years some, if not all, schools had air raid shelters on the school's grounds. In The Holy Family School there were several that ran at right angles to, and were just over the back garden fence, of the houses in Bishopsford Road. Apart from a shelter, the parallel long humps that these shelters provided with their roofs was a much used and appreciated diversionary play ground.
Another point is that some infant and junior teachers were nuns from the convent in Pollards Road, which is off Bishopsford Road on the hill towards Mitcham. I wonder if that is still there.