History

Ongar Grammar School was a private school for boys which was opened as a boarding school in 1811 by William Stokes M.A. By 1845 the school was known as 'Ongar Academy' (not in the post-2010 Academy school sense), by 1874 it was known as a private grammar school, by 1882 as Chignell Grammar School, and by 1914 as Chipping Ongar Grammar School. It closed as such in 1940,^[6][7][8] before the introduction of secondary education under the Education Act 1944 and the Tripartite System.

An earlier private school, which was endowed by a Mr Joseph King in 1678 and funded from rents on houses, was established for "educating, apprenticing and supplying with religious books the poor inhabitants of the parish".^[9] By 1882 this endowed school was listed as being for the education children of the Chipping Ongar and Shelley parishes, and had been reorganized in 1869 and enlarged in 1873 to meet requirements of the Elementary Education Act 1870. By 1894 this school had widened its catchment to include Greensted, and by 1914 to include High Ongar, by which time it had become a Council School. In 1833 there had been seven day schools in Chipping Ongar, one of which was endowed, the others providing education through parent fees. There were also two boarding schools supported at the expense of parents, and two Sunday Schools; one supported by the Church of England, the other by Independent churches.^[6][8][10]

In 1936, Essex County Council had established the Ongar County Secondary School in a neo-Georgian building fronting Fyfield Road, Shelley. The school expanded in the 1960s when it became Ongar Comprehensive School, but was closed in 1989. Its buildings were demolished to make way for a new residential development and new youth and adult education centres. Ongar Leisure Centre, a joint use sporting facility, was retained. Secondary school children were then bussed to schools in the surrounding towns, particularly Brentwood and Shenfield. Twenty six years later in September 2015, the new secondary education school, The Ongar Academy, with no historic association to any previous Ongar school apart from being built on part of the site of the earlier Ongar County Secondary School in Shelley, opened adjacent to Ongar Leisure Centre on Fyfield Road.^[11]