AS you pass down Junction Road from Wigan Road, there was once an old barn opposite Deane Church Lychgate. This was the very first Deane School, one of the earliest in the history of elementary education, and its foundation goes back almost 400 years.
The first endowment of the school was in 1615, when Mr Giles Marsh left £10 in his will which was invested in land towards the support of a school at Deane. In the same year a Mr Barton left £5 for a free school. As the years went by the school was mainly supported by legacies of people who lived in the vast Deane parish, which stretched as far as Manchester on one side, and contained within its boundaries only four schools. The original school gave lengthy service, but two later schools were built in 1820 and 1882 - presumably this photograph, taken in 1932, is of the latter
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