THIS September Cirencester Infants and Junior Schools will merge to become one school, Cirencester Primary School. The school will retain its historic Victoria Road premises, which has been a seat of learning since 1881, when Cirencester Grammar School moved in.

It was in 1969 that plans were drawn up at Gloucestershire’s Shire Hall for both schools to relocate to the Victoria Road site from their overcrowded Lewis Lane premises, as Cirencester Grammar School moved out.

The move was intended to provide relief for two of Cirencester’s most cramped primary schools. On June 7, 1971 274 students from Cirencester Junior School (then called County Juniors) transferred to the main site at Victoria Road. The head at the time, Mr G Dando, said: “We have plenty of staff but too many children.” He also told the Standard: “We are most looking forward to the use of the Victoria-street playing field. We have none here and it has been a great handicap.”

And on July 8 1971 Cirencester Infant schoolchildren made the trek from Lewis Lane to Victoria Road, a moment captured for posterity by the Wilts and Glos Standard. There were 160 pupils on the roll at Lewis Lane, with a further 90 infants in rented accommodation some distance away in Chesterton. Head of the Infant school was Miss June Stacey, who told the Standard at the time that she had 15 children who were waiting to go to the school, but there was no room for them.

Throughout the years some alterations were made to the buildings, including the entire re-wiring of the Junior School in April 1979, but the character and history of them remained unchanged.

In July 1988, after a wait of 18 years, work finally started on a longed for proper playground for the Infants School.

One of the biggest changes came not to the building but to the names of both schools in 1999, when they were legally required to drop County from their titles.

From September 2010 the separate schools, who have such a long shared history, will finally share a name and a future as one school, under the guidance of one head Mr Graham Horton.

Cirencester Junior School’s popular outgoing headteacher, Mrs Pam Keevil, who has been at the school since 2003, said: “The buildings will stay the same but the use of them will change. It will feel very much a whole. The beauty of the amalgamation is that it links to our school emblem of the phoenix. There has been education on these premises since the 1880’s and this will still be a place of learning but like the phoenix it will be in a different format.”