St Peter's College, Saltley was a school and teacher training establishment located in Saltley, Birmingham.
Founded in 1852 in part with help from Charles Adderley, 1st Baron Norton as modern Saltley developed, the school closed in 1941 while the college closed in the 1980s. The building today is now sub-divided into a multi-use facility combining homes, offices and meeting rooms.
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Originally opened in 1852 as Worcester, Lichfield & Hereford Diocesan Training College and then Saltley Church of England College for teacher training, it was latterly known as St Peter's.[1]
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. 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 had its own school, known initially as the Worcester Diocesan Practising School, it followed the college in naming and changed to St Peter's 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 the Second World War, the school closed and was never reopened.
The training college closed in 1978, when it was integrated with the facilities of the University of Birmingham at Edgbaston. The Church of England owned building was sold to the local authority, and are now used as homes, community centre and as local authority offices.
The funds from the sale of the buildings were used to create the St Peter's Saltley Trust in 1980.[2] The trust has three objectives in its work across the West Midlands of :lay Christian education; further education; and religious education in schools. The trust generally makes projects available to fund projects which meet its objectives.