Old, and Some New, Photographs of Woodbridge & Melton
After William Lockwood completed 'The Castle' he built a Gothic house, which became known as ‘The Little Castle’, for his mother and father. The Little Castle is white building on the corner of Castle Street and St Johns Lane.
Phot207
Lockwood went on to build other houses along the bottom of Castle Street. Their common feature was stuccoing - the use of cement to make it appear that they were made of stone.
Lockwood was a member of a group of non-conformists known as the “Woodbridge Society for the Education of Poor Children”. In 1819 they founded a British and Foreign School in a large, white, bay fronted house, built and owned by Lockwood. The location of the house is indicated by the red arrow overlaid on the photograph on the right.
In 1923 the Sisters of Mercy founded the Convent of Our Lady of Lourdes, and the Convent School of St Philomena in Woodbridge. Both were located in a five bed-roomed house on a site behind The Little Castle.
There were only 24 Catholic children in Woodbridge when Convent School opened on the 15th September 1923 but by January 1924 there were 50 pupils. By October 1924 a bungalow had been built in the grounds to provide a dormitory for boarders, a classroom and a large dining room. The school also ran an evening class for adults. When the East Coast was designated a danger zone in 1940 the number of children in the convent dropped to seven and the number of nuns to two. The school closed for the Christmas holiday in 1941 and never reopened.
