Chance Technical College, Smethwick, October 2012

Hello,

Almost drive past this everyday and never even knew it was there.

in 1846 the Chance family started evening classes in science and art at their glassworks in Spon Lane for the benefit of their workers. In 1852 an education institute was formed which existed for almost twenty years. By 1885 Most classes were being run in the envening at the higher grade school in Crocketts Lane. In 1910 a permanent Smethwick Technical School was opened next door. It served as a Junior Technical School for school-age pupils during the day and an adult further education school in the evenings.

The school became Smethwick Municipal College in 1927 and was renamed Chance Technical College in 1945 and A block of engineering and building workshops was opened in 1950.

Between 1952 and 1966 major extensions were built and they enabled the college to accommodate 3,500 students by 1966. In 1968 the college was merged with Oldbury College of Further Education to form Warley College of Technology, with the buildings in Crockett's Lane (Chance Building) housing the main administrative centre of the new college and six of its eight departments

At some point it merged again and became Sandwell College - Smethwick Finally closing in stages between 2011 and 2012 as the college moved to a new campus.

Visited with Donebythehands. Met a tramp on the way in who told us security had chucked him out but security would be ok if we was taking pictures. Anyway I am working with an older Nikon and due to money restraints the lens I use are not the best.

Onto the pics





















































Hope you enjoy

Some good photo's there.

wow great stuff liking this

Missed out on this one last week

Gorgeous building!!!

Great shots, looks like an interesting place

thats got some lovely features

Nice looking building,great pics.

I like that, especially the dome.

Glazed brick porn. Straight up!

Really nice looking place , super pics .

Thank you

had a wander round here a few weeks back..i loved it..such a great splore ...great to see it on here brill work

Old Times

I have fond memories of that place having done a 12 month course there in 1984. Nice Pics well done.

Keith

Great pics. I attended that college in the late 70s. Lots of good memories.

Dave M said:

Great pics. I attended that college in the late 70s. Lots of good memories.

Click to expand...

Yow a Brummie then? They demolished the college I went to... must have been something I said... Welcome to the forum.

Dave M said:

Great pics. I attended that college in the late 70s. Lots of good memories.

Click to expand...

The idea of today's youngsters having tea and then going off to spend two hours improving their practical and theoretical abilities would terrify them. The private railway companies were well known for their Mutual Improvement Classes, when employees would go after work to learn and thus move up the trade levels.

Is it all demolished now then??

john..

Angelus said:

Hello,

Almost drive past this everyday and never even knew it was there.

in 1846 the Chance family started evening classes in science and art at their glassworks in Spon Lane for the benefit of their workers. In 1852 an education institute was formed which existed for almost twenty years. By 1885 Most classes were being run in the envening at the higher grade school in Crocketts Lane. In 1910 a permanent Smethwick Technical School was opened next door. It served as a Junior Technical School for school-age pupils during the day and an adult further education school in the evenings.

The school became Smethwick Municipal College in 1927 and was renamed Chance Technical College in 1945 and A block of engineering and building workshops was opened in 1950.

Between 1952 and 1966 major extensions were built and they enabled the college to accommodate 3,500 students by 1966. In 1968 the college was merged with Oldbury College of Further Education to form Warley College of Technology, with the buildings in Crockett's Lane (Chance Building) housing the main administrative centre of the new college and six of its eight departments

At some point it merged again and became Sandwell College - Smethwick Finally closing in stages between 2011 and 2012 as the college moved to a new campus.

Visited with Donebythehands. Met a tramp on the way in who told us security had chucked him out but security would be ok if we was taking pictures. Anyway I am working with an older Nikon and due to money restraints the lens I use are not the best.

Onto the pics

View attachment 137221

View attachment 137222

View attachment 137223

View attachment 137224

View attachment 137225

View attachment 137226

View attachment 137227

View attachment 137228

View attachment 137229

View attachment 137230

View attachment 137231

View attachment 137232

View attachment 137233

View attachment 137234

View attachment 137235

View attachment 137236

View attachment 137237

View attachment 137238

View attachment 137239

View attachment 137240

View attachment 137241

View attachment 137242

View attachment 137243

View attachment 137244

View attachment 137245

View attachment 137246

Hope you enjoy

Click to expand...

Thank you for putting these pictures up. I attended that college in the late 70s, so they do bring back memories.
Most of your picks seem to be within the old Chance Building (Admin block) which I must admit I never had need to go through very often, short of maybe accessing the internal link bridge to the other nearby block, as I would mainly walk between blocks at road level, esp leaving the dining hall.
Two pics do stand out above the rest. The one is where you can see into the car park of Smethwick Police Station, so that would have been taken from the roof of the college office block on Crocketts Lane. You can see roughly where it would have been taken from as the vehicle entrance to the station is still there, but the office block had since been demolished and redeveloped into houses.
The second pic, which is the one before what I have just mentioned, shows an elevated of the old primary school on Crocketts Lane to the upper left-hand side, (even by the time I went there, the college had already taken over the school fully), and the roof of the engineering workshops to the lower right.

When it comes to one of those engineering workshops, I have something that I will always remember. One day, at the end of a morning class in the workshop, I was cleaning down a lathe that I had been using and, somehow, managed to suffer a fairly bad cut across my left hand. By now, the rest of the lads in class were queueing up at the only basin in the room, wanting to clean their hands and run off to the dining room, so me, not one to cause a fuss or create a scene, stood at the back of the queue...Bleeding heavily from my left hand, and just waiting patiently to be able to get to the sink.
Eventually, one of my classmates saw me, pushed a few others out of my way, and got me to the sink to clean the wound, etc, telling someone else to notify the college staff.
So if you can now imagine the scene, staff rushed in to find a student, me (I was either 16 or 17 at that time), with blood all down my left arm from when I was trying to compress the cut, blood down my left leg, blood over the workshop floor, and they panicked a bit.
The workshop had to be closed for a while for a clean-up and I ended up going to the local hospital, which back in the day was Dudley Road Hospital, later becoming the City Hosp., where I had the hand x-rayed (just in case of any metal debris) and had it stitched up and padded out, a consequence of which was I could not do any workshop activity for a week or so until the stitches had been taken out, but as I am right handed, I was placed in the classroom of other groups just to get me doing something.
Needless to say, when I did get back to the college, there was a load of paperwork to do over the incident, as there was when I got back to the firm I worked for, just to keep their records up to date.
So overall, an unusual day in my apprenticeship education, but the one good thing was...I got that afternoon off college.

Dave M said:

One day, at the end of a morning class in the workshop, I was cleaning down a lathe that I had been using and, somehow, managed to suffer a fairly bad cut across my left hand.

Click to expand...

Sounds extremely familiar! I had a very similar incident when I brushed aluminium swarf off the job with my finger. My mate walked by me and asked why there was a pool of blood on the floor. Then when we realised that my finger was pouring blood he shouted for the teacher, a notorious skiver who would sit in his office and literally leave a bunch of maniac 14 year olds to their own devices in a room full of lethal machinery and a roaring forge whilst he had a... well you know what... over a dirty mag he had discovered at lunch time in amongst the school mini bus fund salvaged newspapers! So out comes "You boys!" as we called him, who proceeds to rant and rave at me, then slipper me, and then finally send me off for treatment! You couldn't script it could you!