Willowfield Lower School Caddington

Willowfield School was built as a County Primary in the early 1960s [CA2/306]. It was just north-east of Five Oaks County Secondary School, built at the same time, on the eastern outskirts of the village. The site originally formed part of Woodside Farm. In 1965 the farmer Ned Charles Brown conveyed about ten acres to Bedfordshire County Council for £4,000 [CCE1985/3].

In the 1970s Bedfordshire County Council introduced comprehensive education, doing away with the 11+ examination and grammar schools and introducing a tier of school between the old County Primary and County Secondary Schools. Thus Lower Schools now taught children aged 4 to 9, Middle Schools from 9 to 13 and Upper Schools from 13 onwards. Willowfield duly became a Lower School.

The school closed on 31st August 2008. It then merged with the former Heathfield Lower School and Five Oaks, which had become a middle school in the 1970s, to form a new Caddington Village School. This school teaches children from ages three to thirteen and is based on the Willowfield/Five Oaks site. The land for both sites was registered in June 2009 [CCE1985/9].