Fort Pitt in war and in peace: Chapter Eight : Fort Pitt School in the Second World War and the latter half of the 20th Century

When Miss Young took over from Miss Moffat as the Head of the Medway Technical School for Girls in 1936, she could have hardly known that, within four years, she would have been responsible for the safety and wellbeing of those on the site at the time of a threat from German aerial bombing of the Medway Towns, after the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. During the Second World War the Dockyard complex was repeatedly attacked and Chatham was hit by 267 high explosive bombs, and 1,535 incendiaries.

To underline the danger, not far from the School, Twenty-four people died, in Ordnance Street in Chatham when two parachute bombs were dropped in 1940. In 2006 the BBC interviewed Margaret Giles, who had been a school in Chatham at this time and she recalled

: "The town in which I lived, called Chatham, was a prime target for the Germans to bomb because the Royal Marines were based there, it was Naval dockyard where the HMS Victory was built and it was home to many British war ships. It was also a very large submarine base and the Royal Engineer barracks were there. The first time the War began to affect me was when my school had to close and was only opened when everybody had to be issued with a gas mask, which again for children was very frightening. While all this was going on it was pretty quiet. It wasn't until the Battle of Britain started the following August, that the bombing started properly. By then, we were almost living in our air raid shelter in the garden. It was uncomfortable but at least safe unless a bomb actually fell on top of it".

The pupils at Fort Pitt, like all pupils in Britain, were required to take their gas masks to school in the event of gas bombs being dropped. Here their teachers were required to carry out gas drills in which the pupils removed the masks from their bags and placed over their faces as quickly and efficiently as possible as shown here in the class in another school at the time. (link) In the first instance, Miss Moffat, as the Head Teacher had to see to it that all parts of the School were supplied with equipment to be used in the event of fires breaking out. The instructions in the Domestic Science Centre, for example, read :

The instructions in the event of an air raid stated :

Within the School building a ‘protected place’ was the lower corridor connecting the old and new wings of the Military Hospital, where blast walls had been built. An ex-pupil recalled : “The blast walls along the bottom corridor, one way only for safety. How many times did we nip through the wrong way to take a short cut”. However, by far the safest places on the site were the large underground chambers which had once housed the arsenal of the Fort at the time of the war against Napoleon in the early 1800s and the pupil recalled : “Air raids, when we were shepherded in to tunnels, that was quite exciting”. In fact, in the later stages of the War, when sirens rang out over Chatham and flying bombs began to fall there was not enough time to reach the shelters and pupils had to put their heads under their wooden desks for protection.

A correspondent to the website 'Subterranean History : Fort Pitt' wrote : 'My Nan was a pupil at Fort Pitt during WW2 and she was the lady who showed them where entrance to the tunnels was in 2011. She often talks about how they would spend the mornings lessons down there. Then "Jerry" would fly home to refuel mid day leaving them just enough time to go up to the school for lunch, then back down again for afternoon lessons as the plains would return'.(link)

The 1940 A.R.P. (Air Raid Precaution) plan of the Fort’s underground complex drawn by the County Architect in Maidstone, dated 1940, reveals the two domed central chambers, one of which can be seen above. They and their attendant corridors were opened up and the steps furnished with new stairs. The chambers measured 24 x 16 feet and the rest of the underground complex had a further 6 compartments of varying shape and size. There were 3 emergency exits and the eastern part of the complex had 3 water closets for women and three for men. The complex was also electrically heated and lit and the plan indicated that the complex could house 204 people in 1940 and was planned to expand this to 568 as the War progressed.

During the War, it was an additional duty of the teaching staff to act as fireguards for the School from the blackout after school until 7.30 am. On one of these nights the Army arrived to look for a German plane which was reported to have come down in the School grounds, but which was later found to have been found to have dropped into the River Medway.

As the War progressed the number of pupils attending the School dropped considerably. In September 1939 there were 318, but by April 1940 this had fallen to 139. The main reason was the evacuation of children from the Medway Towns with its aerial bombing target of Chatham Dockyard. Initially they went to Sittingbourne, then later some to South Wales. (link) The numbers rose towards the end of the War when the school also took in girls from Rochester and Chatham Girls Schools.

Miss Moffat retired as Headmistress in 1942, but before she handed over to Miss Sackett, she initiated curriculum change in 1941 in the shape of a a new Pre- Nursing course which was started with the approval of the General Nursing Council, at the same time the entry age, for pupils was raised from 12 to 14 for most pupils, with one class remaining at 12+ and the length of the course was cut from 3 to 2 years.

At this point in time, only grammar school pupils could take the School Certificate Examination. Miss Sackett recalled the case of the pupil, Marjorie Youngs, in 1944 when she said : “I have always considered her determination to take the School Certificate at Fort Pitt and not to be transferred to a grammar school to be an important event in the School’s history. She wanted to know why Fort Pitt could not do this work , or perhaps I should say “did not”. I promised to refer the problem to the Chief Inspector, Mr Birchenough, whose answer was “Well, why not ?”. This was in 1944. The course grew from five girls taking the School Certificate in 1945 to, I think about ninety-nine for ‘O’ level and GCE when I was leaving in 1961. There was much opposition form the grammar schools at first, for they thought that the 'Technical School' was not the proper place for such examination work. The success of the Modern School pupils, especially those entering by transfer at 15+ years , led these schools to undertake the examination work themselves. It was an exciting development to watch”. In 1951 she saw the start of pupils entered for ‘A’ Levels at the School with one student entered for Music.

The aerial photo of Fort Pitt taken in 1956, reveals that very little had changed on the ground at Fort Pitt since the 1930s, when the blockhouse at the front of the site had been demolished and the defensive ditches had been levelled, with the three, partially walled tennis courts in the old eastern ditch in the foreground. A new teaching block with a flat roof had been added to the main building and two single storey science labs had been built on the north-east flank.

Another new building was the caretaker’s house which enabled him to provide full-time surveillance of the site. Apart from that, the old hospital asylum, now the Domestic Science Centre, was still surrounded by hospital-planted trees, nestled in the north eastern corner of the grounds. Beneath the surface, the underground chambers, after their use as air raid shelters during the Second World War, remained untouched, with their entrances now bricked up, although there had been a tradition for a few years after the War for the whole school to be led through the passages as a Christmas treat.

In 1964 the school changed its name to the ‘Medway Technical High School for Girls’ and started to admit pupils if they had passed their 11+ examination and by this time the sixth form was in excess of 100. At this time it was house in the old 'Ophthalmic and Dental Block' which stood to the west of the main block.

It was about this time that one of the School’s most distinguished alumnus, the fashion and textile designer, Zandra Rhodes, joined the School at the age of 13 in 1953. She recalled : "I failed the 11-plus but I never regarded it as a failure. I had a very, very bright mother who was encouraging - and I had another chance. I passed the '13-plus' to Chatham Technical School for Girls and from then I worked to make sure I was at the top of the class. I was quite academic. I enjoyed all aspects of school, except maths and also a subject called 'hygiene', which was a bit like human biology. The hygiene teacher hated me and I was so frightened of her that I couldn't take in what she said. I wasn't good at spelling; she would read all my mis-spellings out to the class, who would laugh. I would have to laugh too; then the teacher said, "Go to the headmistress and tell her what's so funny".

Zandra continued : "I passed the six O-levels that I took. I did very well in biology: I could write an essay on photosynthesis and do cutaway drawings of plants. I loved art - the teacher would use my stuff as an example - and I did it at A-level in a year, as well as history". Zandra then attended ‘Medway School of Arts and Crafts’ in nearby Rochester, where her mother taught and they said she was good enough to miss the first year of the four-year course.

By the time Miss Sackett retired as Headmistress in 1962 and handed over to Miss Elliott, the school roll had reached 888 pupils and was therefore in excess of both the population of Fort and the Hospital before it. To overcome the problem of the lack of accommodation, some pupils were taught at the former St.Peter’s School on the New Road (now the Roffen Club). Two years later and to solve the problem of the lack of accommodation, the most significant building to be erected since the new hospital wing opened in 1910, took the shape of the the Sackett Wing. Opened in 1964 provided additional accommodation as the School expanded. There were a new school hall, kitchen, dining room and a block of classrooms. In the process of constructing the foundations the builders uncovered a chamber which had once served as a brick-lined reservoir for the Fort.

In 1962 the librarian at the Royal Army Medical Corps at Millbank in London, H.M.Davis recorded It is interesting to note that many of the old relics of the early days have been preserved by the school authorities. The old ablution rooms, very small with tiny basins sunk into square slabs and the various signs painted on the walls are still the same. (link)

The most dramatic change on the surface of the site came in 1973, when damage caused to the buildings as a result serious fire, led to the biggest programme of demolition since that of the Fort’s blockhouse was levelled in 1931. A youth was subsequently arrested and charged with arson and his court case showed that he had broken in to the typing room, on the first floor to the rear of the of the Administration Block and had set fire to the contents of a waste paper bin. The resulting conflagration was so fierce that the metal typewriters melted in the blaze. The fire, then got in to timber joists supporting the roof and spread north over the first floor corridor which led to the main staircase and to the staff rooms at the front of the building. The fact that the rooms below, on the ground floor, were damaged by water and smoke, but not fire, could be explained by the fact that the thick concrete floors with their terrazzo surface, on the first floor, made for the Military Hospital in 1910, acted as a very effective fire block between the first and ground floor..

Firefighters tackled the blaze inside on the ground floor of the building by focusing their hoses on the first floor by way of the stair well. Miraculously, the School’s 1927 ‘Tradition Chest’ and its contents in this corridor remained undamaged. Other fire fighters with their engines drawn up in front of the School tackled the burning roof on ladders from above.

For the new Head Teacher, Miss Patton, who had been in post for just one week, this was a real 'baptism of fire'. Alerted to the blaze, she drove to the School to witness the fire herself. Now with her management team, she faced the formidable task of getting the School back on its feet again. After emergency staff meetings and plans for reorganisation which included classes being redesignated to alternative accommodation and mobile classrooms and the school administration and staffroom relocated in the Sackett Wing. Remarkably, the School reopened for senior school exams on the following Wednesday and the lower forms the following week. In addition, some of the School was rehoused, through hospitality in St. John Fisher School and the New Road Youth Centre. The problem of permanent accommodation wasn’t solved until the Elliott Wing had been added to the Wing and named after the Head Teacher, Freda Elliott, who had been Miss Patton's predecessor from 1962-71.

One ex-pupil recalled : ‘The old building had been cordoned off for safety reasons. No one seemed to know what was happening to it, there were painters and builders everywhere. When the boards came down, it was evident that this was to be the extent of the restoration. I am sure I am not alone in feeling that we had lost a very special part of the School. There was something about those stairs. They swept their way from the staff rooms, down to the ground floor opposite the sick room. You could always imagine yourself as one of the movie stars in a fabulous gown as you glided down holding on to the carved wooden handrail. At the bottom was the show case containing all the School’s top prizes and honours’.

When Miss Patton retired in 1984 she was replaced by the new Head Teacher, Miss Atkins who now took over the technical school which now changed its designation the Fort Pitt Grammar School for Girls and today is simply known as Fort Pitt Grammar School.

Over the last 50 years new buildings were added to the school which reflected the changing nature of the school curriculum. The old hospital Asylum building was now a ‘Music House’, a new Sports Hall was built in the south eastern corner of the site and a new Science Block on the north-eastern flank. One of the two remaining single storey buildings which had once been wards, next to the 1910 hospital block, was demolished and replaced a new Art, Design and Technology Centre. Architecturally, its Greek pediment imitated that of the adjacent 1910 hospital block.

The new school building was not the only major change to the site of Fort Pitt in these years as the owner of the site, Kent County Council turned its attention to expanding higher and further education. As a result, The Medway and Maidstone College of Technology opened in 1968 and built on the are once occupied by the defensive ditch on the southern flank of Fort Pitt.

This was followed by the Medway College of Art and Design opened in 1970 and built on the area once occupied by the blockhouse of Fort Pitt demolished in 1931. Plans to build a new site at Fort Pitt for what had become ‘The Medway School of Arts and Crafts’ based at Eastgate in the neighbouring town of Rochester in what is now the Adult Education Centre and had been delayed, initially, by the Second World War. In the course of construction, a tunnel, dating from the Fort's construction in the early 19th century, was found 40 feet underground below the east wall which was thought to run the 1.5 miles to Gun Wharf in Chatham. The cellars beneath the new building are protected by English Heritage listing and remain so, with the building itself closed down in 2023 with the closure of the College.

The College of Technology was renamed the 'Mid-Kent College of Higher and Further Education’ and finally, before its closure in 2009, the ‘Mid Kent College’. After its demolition the site was developed as a housing estate, accessed off the City Way, known as ‘The Fort’.