# St Peter's College, Saltley

St Peter's College, Saltley was a teacher training establishment located in Saltley, Birmingham, England. Today the former college building has now been refurbished and sub-divided into a multi-use facility, combining homes, offices and meeting rooms.

## History

Founded in 1850, in part with help from MP Charles Adderley (later Baron Norton) as modern Saltley developed, it first opened as the Worcester Diocesan Training School, later known as the Worcester, Lichfield & Hereford Diocesan Training College and then Saltley Training College. Designed by Gothic Revival architect Benjamin Ferrey, it was built in a Tudor Revival architecture style format of a University of Oxford college, created around a quadrangle at the top of College Road. It housed only 30 trainee teachers initially, which quickly rose to 300 students.
The college had its own school, known initially as the Worcester Diocesan Practising School. Located on the junction of College Road and Bridge Road, on opening in 1853 it had two classrooms, one master and 185 boys. A new school room allowed pupil numbers to rise to nearly 500 by 1871. Hit by a Luftwaffe bomb during World War II, the school closed in 1941 and never reopened.
When the college reopened after World War II, it was known simply as Saltley College, and latterly as St Peter's. It expanded quickly in the mid-1960s to cope with falling teacher numbers and rising school rolls, with the first female students admitted in 1966. The college closed in 1978. The Old Salts' Association (OSA) has an annual reunion on the first Saturday in July at College. The OSA also has a 'closed group' Facebook page. Another Facebook page, 'Saltley College 1964' also shares memories from men who attended the college from 1961 ~ 1964.

## Redevelopment

The Church of England owned building was sold to the local authority in 1980, and then used as a hall of residence by Aston University. The funds from the sale of the buildings were used to create the St Peter's Saltley Trust in 1980. The trust has three objectives in its work across the West Midlands of England: lay Christian education; further education; and religious education in schools. The trust generally makes funds available to enable projects which meet its objectives to take place.
After the university vacated the building, it was redeveloped as an Urban Village, with accommodation, initially for the elderly and then the local community, in addition to student accommodation, together with small business units.

## Saltley College Football Club

Saltley College's football team formed one of the earliest clubs in the Midlands.

### History

The earliest reported match for the club - a 1–0 victory over a club named Incogniti on 15 February 1873 - may have been the first game in Birmingham played under association football laws. A return match played at Adderley Park saw the College win by 5–0. The laws which applied are not made clear; the lack of references to touchdowns in either match suggests they were not rugby matches. At the time, the Sheffield rules were popular in the north of England, and the Calthorpe club, formed at around this time, was promoting the association laws.
The club was a founder member of the Birmingham Football Association and played in the first Birmingham Senior Cup in 1876–77, contributing £1 12s to the cost of the trophy.
The club captain for 1876, William Thompson, introduced a passing game to the side in place of the dribbling game hitherto played, helping the club to the semi-finals of the competition in its first three seasons, beating Aston Villa in 1877–78 en route to losing to Wednesbury Strollers in front of a crowd of 2,000 at Villa's Wellington Road ground. The Collegians went further in 1879–80, reaching the final, beating Stoke in the third round, in a tie delayed to allow the students to return to college after a mid-term break. In the semi-finals the club lost 3–0 to Derby at the Aston Lower Grounds, but a protest was made that one of the Derby players was "cup-tied", having already played for Wednesbury Strollers in the Sheffield Challenge Cup, against the rules of the competition which barred any player from representing more than one side in competitive matches. The protest was upheld and the College team put into the final, where they lost 3–1 to Villa.
The match was the College's high point in football. The team never entered the FA Cup and the next time they reached the quarter-finals of the Senior Cup, in 1881–82, they were beaten 6–0 at Wednesbury Old Athletic; the club's final match in the competition came the next season, a 9–0 defeat at Walsall Swifts in the third round. The Saltley College side continued playing in amateur football until 1967.

### Colours

The club listed its colours as blue. The club later added yellow trim and red stockings.

### Ground

The club's pitch in the college grounds was, like the Muntz Street ground of Small Heath Alliance, notorious for being "indented with furrows, which caused an approaching line of forwards to bear resemblance to a thinly-tenanted switchback-car". Partly as a result the club was unbeaten at home until losing to Wednesbury Old Athletic F.C. in October 1878, by the remarkalbe score of 10–3, "much to the surprise of [the club] and the other collegians who witnessed the match".

### Notable players

The College was considered a nursery of footballing talent, relying strictly on "science" and avoiding charging, with players such as Thomas Slaney of Stoke City, John Brodie, George Copley, Tom Bryan (later of Wednesbury Strollers and Aston Villa), and champion sprinter Charles Johnstone all went through the College.
The most famous college player however was Teddy Johnson, who earned a cap for England in 1880, while captain of the College.
The College also provided players to the Birmingham FA representative side, such as Rutherford and Goodyear, who played in the matches against the London Football Association in 1878, and Johnson represented the Birmingham FA in the "junior international" against Scotland in 1880.