The old Walmley School was demolished in 2004, and two new houses were built on the site. It had long since been converted into a dwelling house and had a pleasant rural setting off Fox Hollies Road, only to be surrounded by new housing with the expansion of Walmley in the late 1970s.

The school was built in 1826, one of three elementary schools provided by the Sutton Corporation for the education of every child - the other two were Town School and Hill School at Mere Green - and whereas these two schools could take 100 children each, Walmley School was for 40, 20 boys and 20 girls. The corporation built these schools under an agreement reached in 1824, and had already arranged for ten boys and ten girls to be taught by Mrs. Short in her house at Thimble End (Fox Hollies Road). In 1826 Mr. Holbeche was authorised to build the school at “Beyond the Wood”, and in 1827 Sarah Ann Adams was appointed teacher at the newly built school.

In the early 1800s the area was sparsely populated. Walmley Village as we know it today was open common land, and most of the houses in Walmley were half a mile away at Walmley Ash. The district known as “Walmley and Beyond the Wood” covered several square miles of countryside. Nearby Penns Mill was flourishing, however, with new houses being built for its increasing workforce, and from 1830 a new settlement began to grow up along the roads set out when the commons were enclosed at Walmley village. Soon the school was too small to cater for the increased population, and a new school was built at Wylde Green. This new school, in Green Lanes, was for boys, and for many years boys from as far away as Minworth would trudge along Penns Lane to this school, passing girls from Wylde Green going to Walmley School, which was now for girls only.

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The old school house at Walmley pictured in 2002