One of Devizes' best known primary schools that has seen its pupil numbers drop in recent years may move to the other side of town. LEWIS COWEN looks back to the early days of St Peter's School and its staff

IF the option is taken to move St Peter's Primary School in Devizes to Quakers Walk, it will be the end of more than 130 years of local history.

St Peter's National School opened in 1870, four years after the church of the same name, the town's fourth Anglican church, was built next door. As new homes sprang up along Bath Road and Avon Road, the school prospered, moving into the adjoining Edwardian grammar school buildings when it moved to the Green.

The school has had a history of long-serving head teachers. Percival Greed, who was mayor of Devizes twice, was headmaster at St Peter's for 38 years between 1932 and 1970, replacing another long-serving head, Sammy White.

Mr Greed's son Peter, who also ended up in the teaching profession as a physics master at Headlands School, Swindon, was a pupil at St Peter's and remembers his time there very clearly.

He said: "It was a very happy little school with a family atmosphere about it. Everyone co-operated in making sure that good manners were maintained, even if it meant snitching on people who used bad language.

"Being the headmaster's son conveyed no favours along with it. Although we both walked from home to school and back every day, I was never allowed to walk with him. The only benefit I had was being allowed to hide in the kneehole of his desk when there was an air raid warning."

No bombs ever fell on Devizes, but the war had its effect on the town, especially with the numbers of servicemen coming to train at the barracks along London Road.

Many soldiers met their future wives in the town and after the war there was a boom in the birth rate, which meant good news for St Peter's School.

Mr Greed's father was a noted swimmer and used to take swimming classes in the outdoor pool, built in one of the lock pounds on the Kennet and Avon Canal that ran past the rear of the school grounds.

In those days St Peter's catered for children from five to 15 years of age, but in 1959 there was a shock in store when the county education authority declared that, as a proper primary school, it could only take children up to 11.

Some 50 children had to be absorbed by what was then Southbroom Secondary Modern School the following September.

Since then St Peter's has continued to enjoy a reputation as a first-rate primary school and came into its own when the Waiblingen Way and Mayenne Place housing schemes went up in the 1960s.

But over recent years, pupil numbers have dropped off, mainly as a result of families whose children used to go to St Peter's staying on in the area while their children move on to secondary school and then move out to university and into the world of work.

Changes in housing association policy, where single people and those without children are housed in the area, while families with children are sent to housing estates on the south-eastern corner of the town, have also had their effect on the school population.

The school roll has fallen from 179 in 1998 to 110 this year, although more applied to send their children there since an article on St Peter's plight appeared in the Gazette in January.

As a result, the original school building, which had until recently been used as the infants' block, has now been leased to a private nursery school, while the primary school now operates from the Edwardian building originally part of Devizes Grammar School.

Current head Sandy Fletcher and her staff said they would be sad to leave the buildings, which, although past their best, are still comfortable and welcoming. But the future of the school could be secured by moving to a new building closer to the new centre of population.