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Morefields Deaf Council Schools, Russell Town Avenue [now Dean Lane] (1927–1942)
The first Morefields Deaf Council School opened in June 1927 when Classes for the Partially Deaf moved from the New Street Mission Rooms in New Street, Old Market. Between the school’s opening and evacuation to Herefordshire in 1941, the school occupied three different school buildings, all of them on the site now used by City Academy Bristol. The first school building was built around 1900, and included woodworking and domestic science classroom in addition to traditional teaching rooms. One building, the original Infant’s School, remains today and was home to the Deaf School between 1933 and 1935.
1933 was year that the Kingsdown Institution for Deaf Children closed, at which point the day-pupils from there moved to join the partially Deaf children in Moorfields. This brought the number of Deaf and partially Deaf children to 50.
In November 1935 school moved again, this time to Cartlton Park Special School, a new building to eastern end of the first school. The new school was not, however, a purpose-built Deaf school and proved ineffective as teaching space for the Deaf. May 1942, like many of Bristol’s schools, the Deaf school was evacuated to Ledbury Park in Herefordshire.
The Head Teacher throughout the time at Russell Town Avenue was Miss Helen D Virgo. Virgo is noted as especially important to the history of Deaf education in Bristol, and is remembered as helping influence the lowering of the school entry age for Deaf children (from 7 to 5) in the 1937 Education Act. Although an innovator in Deaf education, teaching at Moorfields was by Oral methods and speech training only. But in the 1930s Virgo also introduced new technology into the school in the form of the Multitone Deaf-Aid, an electronic system of hearing aids that introduced the Audiological period in Deaf education history.