THE Hannah Street school was on the ‘wild north of Barry’, a structure deemed unnecessary and saw many objections for its construction in the late 1890s.

But the school, now called Jenner Park Primary School, was in fact opened in 1900 as Hannah Street Schools. As its name on the corner of Hannah Street and Barry Road, Hannah Street Schools (and known under various names with 'Hannah Street' being used), is thus by any account an impressive structure.

An octagonal tower on its street corner with a leaden hood, Hannah Street School - as we will refer to it here - has two floors, and three types of main frontage constructional materials.

The dominant red brink, locally-made, with Bathstone type stone for string courses and window dressing.

And it is my belief the underfloor and pediment detail is in fact Portland Stone (I may be wrong).

The architects Jones, Richards and Budgen spared no expense in building material whatever the source, and certainly after 123 years it has stood the test of time.

Fine intricate stone work is to be examined at the 'tower' at second floor level, also with the name on Barry Road frontage as 'Hannah Street Board Schools'. Off the Hannah Street entrance the date is displayed as AD 1899.

The Barry Herald of February 8, 1900, reports our Hannah Street Schools opening its girls and boys' departments (the infants having opened a few weeks previously) 'informally' on Monday, January 30, 1900. Headed by Mr. J. E. Rees. Straightaway, it is stated 175 girls and 218 boys are entered into the register, a great start for a school that was not meant to be. And back to that very question?

There was initial opposition to building Hannah Street School which started in 1899, and was opened very early in the January 1900.

The objection was reported in the then Barry Dock News in an article of the January 14, 1898, criticising the choice of the site as being "...far removed from the town and in a direction where there is not the remotest likelihood of an extension of the town... alongside a proposed destructor, at the rear of the slaughter house and close by a public urinal."

The final modernisation of the day for the new school in the Barry and District was a regular electric power source on 1901, provided by a horizontal single-cylinder steam engine.

More from our Barry and District next week.

Karl-James Langford