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In August 1914, the 360 pupils of Brighton Road School had to move to Church halls and school rooms in St Helier while the military authorities used their school as a hospital for wounded soldiers from the Western Front.

As classes were split up, a photograph printed in the Morning News shows a line of boys entering their ‘new’ temporary school – a former Victorian ragged school in Cannon Street. The dark and rundown buildings they used were knocked down in the 1930s. There are flats there now, but you can still picture where the doorway used by the boys a century ago was.

A photograph, a newspaper report, a school log book and some letters between the Lieutenant Governor’s Office and the Education Authorities tell a story about how a generation’s schooling was affected by a war many miles away.

Location: Rouge Bouillon School, Brighton Road, St Helier JE2 3YN
Image: Cannon Street – then and now – courtesy of Societe Jersiase