The one-teacher Oxford Falls Public now has its place in history
IT WAS the last one-teacher school in Sydney and was set for demolition in the 1990s — then the local community stepped in.
Manly
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IT WAS the last one-teacher school in Sydney and was set for demolition in the 1990s but was saved through the efforts of the local community and is now the much-loved Oxford Falls Peace Park and the site each year of the most rustic Anzac Day service on the peninsula.
Now the history of this tiny building has been compiled by historian and retired teacher Keith Amos to mark the 90th anniversary of the first school lessons at Oxford Falls in 1928.
The school itself wasn’t built until 1930, so for the first two years lessons were taken in the nearby St Andrew’s Church of England hall.
Because of its isolation, development at Oxford Falls was slow and the few children living in the area in the early 1900s had to walk to Brookvale to attend school.
Between 1915 and 1917, for instance, nine children were making the daily trudge back and forth between Oxford Falls and Brookvale.
In December 1924, one parent, Viv Hawkins, wrote to the Education Department asking for a school to be established at Oxford Falls but the number of school-age children in the area was insufficient to justify a new school.
Within two years, however, the number had grown sufficiently and in December 1926 the department recommended that a school site be acquired.
In May 1927, 1.6ha was bought from John Pizzey for £300.
While the new school was being planned and built, the Education Department rented the nearby St Andrew’s Church of England as a schoolroom for 10 shillings a week.
The timber, fibro and galvanised iron church was a local wonder in itself, having been erected in one day by a working bee of 40 men on April 26, 1927.
For the children who had had to trek to and from Brookvale every day and in all weathers, having a schoolroom in their own backyard must have been a godsend.
The tender to build the school was given to Sellar Brothers of Dee Why and by April 1930 the Public Works Department was able to report that the new school was ready for use.
“This is a newly-established school upon a new site and comprises one classroom affording seating for 40 pupils; there is also a verandah and a hat room, the latter having four basins for washing purposes. The building is constructed for wood walls on brick piers and is covered with galvanised iron and is well-lighted and well-ventilated.”
Oxford Falls Provisional School, the total cost of which was £487.7.6, was officially opened on June 1930 by the district inspector of schools, W.T. Frazer.
The first principal of the school was Manly resident George Campbell, who held the position until his death in 1935, by which time the school regularly had at least 20 pupils in attendance and the status of the school had risen from being a provisional school to a public school.
Another big moment in the early life of Oxford Falls Public School was the arrival of electricity in March 1939.
Also in 1939, work began at the Seaforth end of what would become Wakehurst Parkway, leading to correspondence between the Education Department and the Department of Main Roads as to whether the proposed road would impact the school’s grounds, which it eventually did but to only a minor extent.
Another landmark in the school’s history, although one that would assume greater significance in later years, was the erection of a war memorial in the school grounds in 1951, after which Anzac Day services were held there for the next 25 years.
By the 1980s, however, one-teacher schools had become an anachronism and in February 1986, Sydney’s last one-teacher school closed.
The closure of the school was followed by debate over the future of the building and the 1.6ha on which it stood.
In 1991 the Education Department announced that it wanted to demolish the school and sell the land, leading to a campaign led by Warringah councillors Paul Couvret and Frank Beckman, local MPs Brad Hazzard and Terry Metherell, the Manly, Warringah and Pittwater Historical Society and local residents.
Eventually the Education Department agreed to vest the school and some of its grounds in Warringah Council and to rezone the remaining land as residential for sale by the State Government.
The schoolhouse was restored and it and the grounds around it were established as the Oxford Falls Peace Park.
As Keith Amos points out, the school building has changed little over the past 88 years – the front verandah was enclosed at some point in the 1950s but this was reversed when the school became the centrepiece of the peace park.
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