Celebrating city’s pioneering woman
Jan 29 2010 by Tony Henderson, The Journal
THE role of a remarkable woman who played a pioneering part in education in Newcastle may soon be celebrated
Dame Allan’s Schools, founded in 1705, are two of the oldest schools in the city.
The Girls’ School is believed to be one of the oldest independent girls’ schools in the country.
They were founded by Dame Eleanor Allan, the daughter of a city goldsmith and the widow of wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan, to provide an education for 40 poor boys and 20 poor girls.
From 1882-83 the schools were based in a building in College Street in Newcastle, designed by leading architect R J Johnson.
Now a listed building on Northumbria University’s campus, it is home to the Law Society.
A statue of Dane Eleanor Allan looks down from the gable end of the adjacent former headmaster’s house in Northumberland Road.
It is believed to be the only statue of a local woman in Newcastle and indeed of any woman other than Queen Victoria.
Now the school has asked the city council to erect a commemorative plaque on the College Street building, where the boys’ school occupied the upper floor and the girls’ school the ground floor.
It also had one of the first physics laboratories in Newcastle.
The bid will be considered by the city’s conservation advisory committee.
The schools moved from College Street to their present location in Fenham in 1935.
School principal Dr John Hind said: “The schools are a city institution and are part of Newcastle’s history. Dame Allan was a remarkable woman of vision and to provide education for both boys and girls at that time was pretty unusual.” Eleanor Allan sold a farm at Wallsend to establish her schools, which seem likely to have been near St Nicholas’ Church in Newcastle.
The schools occupied at least six sites before they moved to the present site in Fenham.
There are now more than 960 pupils and Dame Allan’s has plans to build a new a new junior school in the Hunter’s Moor area which would hopefully open by September 2012.
