Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

COMMINS COCH PRIMARY SCHOOL,' 1929-1979 Part 2 The New School, 1962-1979 Planning and building a new school, 1952-1962. The average number of admissions to Commins Coch school was thirteen a year in the early 1950s, compared with five a year in the later 1940s. In 1952 Aberystwyth Rural District Council planned to build council flats in Commins Coch, so it was likely that there would soon be more children of school age in the hamlet. A sub-committee of the District Education Committee therefore considered possible reorganization in the Commins and Llanbadarn areas, but decided in January 1953 to postpone any decision on building a new school until the council flats had been finished and until 'the pattern of further housing development could be clarified'. Two stop-gap measures suggested were that an overflow from Commins could be housed in the tiny chapel nearby, or sent to Rhydypennau or some other school. After children from the new council flats were admitted in Sept- ember, it was decided that pupils should no longer be admitted under the age of five. The sub-committee then reviewed the situation in the whole of the northern part of the Aberystwyth district, and finally proposed, in May 1954, that a new primary school should be provided for Commins Coch. Three possible sites were discussed, at Commins itself, at Fron- fraith and at Waun Gau, and the first choice was a site of 2.38 acres adjoining the existing school. The possibility of tacking a new building onto the old one was at least contemplated. It was probably the building of Dinas Secondary Modern School at Waun Fawr that caused the L.E.A.'s Joint Buildings Committee to consider an alternative late in 1954, namely that the new primary school should also be built on the Waun, on Cefnllan. Unfortunately the committee could not foresee that the growth of new housing estates in the next decade would result in the new primary school drawing most of its pupils from Waun Fawr, and in February 1955 the Cefnllan site was rejected and the choice of the Commins site confirmed. Part of this site belonged to the Village Hall Committee, which had been accumulating funds to provide a community centre. The Hall Committee promised that it would give its land to the L.E.A., provided the new school had a hall which could serve as a com- munity centre, like that at Ysgol Syr John Rhys at Ponterwyd. It proved impossible, however, to proceed with this plan because the remainder of the chosen site, on the Fronfraith estate, could not be purchased. So the L.E.A. had to look elsewhere.