Cheney Technical School, Headington
In 1934 John Henry Brookes, the Principal of the Oxford City Technical School which had been in St Ebbe’s since 1894, started a junior day department. By 1940 this had 200 pupils from all over Oxfordshire, and in 1944 it became a separate Secondary Technical School in its own right.
The St Ebbe’s premises were so cramped that the school operated from ten separate sites in the city; and the technical college was also short of space. Hence in 1954 they both moved up to Headington to the former land of Mattock’s nursery between Cheney Lane and Headington Hill, on the west side of Gipsy Lane. The technical school (which admitted both boys and girls) took the name "Cheney School" (and of course the technical college is now Oxford Brookes University).
The aerial photograph below shows the foundation of the school in about 1953. On the right is Gipsy Lane, and the land to the north, where Oxford Brookes University is now, is still Mattock's market garden.
In 1959 Cheney Girls' School moved to the south of the Gipsy Lane site. The two schools were merged in 1972 when Oxford began the process of adopting a three-tier system of comprehensive education: they became Cheney Upper School, for boys and girls aged 13 to 18.
In 2003, when Oxford returned to a two-tier system of education, Cheney School became a secondary school taking children aged 11 to 18.