Locke School

The Locke Middle School stands on about 49.5 acres on the east side of Allen Road in the southeastern part of Billerica. The town built it in 1966-1968 as the Cyril D. Locke Junior High School, its second junior high, and named it for Cyril D. Locke, principal of the Howe High School from 1925 to 1953. The school opened in December 1968, became a middle school in 1971 and still serves Billerica's middle grades.

The school lot was once part of the homestead of Thomas Ross, the Scot who about 1670 bought Samuel Kemp's 1658 grant on Loes Plain. Hazen's History of Billerica (1883) puts Kemp's and Ross's place "on the East road, near Miss Sophia Allen's", and says the road toward the Shawshin, now Baldwin Road, was "known, anciently, as Marshall's lane." In 1761 Hezekiah Dunckle sold 100 acres "being part of the homestead that was formerly Mr. Thomas Ross's late of Billerica decd with all the Buildings orchards and fences" to Samuel Lamson of Amherst, New Hampshire, for 200 pounds sterling. The land lay on both sides of the road, bounded by William Thompson, Isaac Marshall, Marshall's Lane, Samuel Danforth and Seth Wilson. In 1777 Lamson sold it to the miller John Patten Jr. for 400 pounds. He and his wife kept for their lives the use of "my Garden and Tobacco Yards and the east End of my Dwelling House and the East half of my Barn."

John Patten died without a will early in 1815. His inventory lists "The Lamson farm (so called)" at $1,750, next to his mill farm on the Shawsheen at the Tewksbury line. The farm passed to two of his daughters. Sarah, wife of Zadock Allen, already lived there in 1817, when the Allens mortgaged their half of the farm, "the same which we now live on," to her unmarried sister Hannah Patten. In 1827 Hannah and her husband Oliver Baldwin of Lancaster sold her half of the 98 acres to Sarah for $850. Zadock Allen died in 1840 and Sarah in 1846. Their daughter Sophia Allen, born in 1809, kept the farm until her death in 1884, and in Hazen's day "Miss Sophia Allen's" was a landmark on the East Road. By 1914 the deeds call the road past the farm Allen Road.

Sophia Allen's will, approved at Lowell on March 18, 1884, left the 97 1/2-acre farm to four relatives. Jackson Wright, Josiah Wright and Annie E. Tutein sold their three quarters to the fourth, Rebecca A. Campbell, that year for $2,962.50. As a widow she sold the farm in 1900 to the trustees of the Boston merchant Eben D. Jordan. In 1906 the trustees sold it to A. Gertrude Tutein and Mary E. Tutein of Revere, and in 1907 Gertrude bought out Mary. Her husband, Constantine D. Tutein, worked the farm and appears in the town reports hiring out his team. In 1914 the Tuteins sold 87 acres, keeping back a ten-acre corner, to Harry I. Walton of Nashua, who resold the same day to Mahlon E. Brande of Reading. In 1915 Brande sold to Marshall B. Smith of Cambridge, taking back a $5,300 mortgage that covered "all the tools, farming implements, and farming machinery, wagons and harnesses."

In 1941 Smith sold the 87 acres "with the buildings thereon situated on both sides of Allen Road and on the southerly side of Baldwin Road, formerly known as Marshall Lane" to Hattie A. and Joseph E. Tousignant. Their mortgagee foreclosed with an auction on the premises in April 1943, and Roger H. Hildreth bought the farm for $1,700. He resold it that November to Lester Forrest Smith and Lera L. Smith. After 1950 house lots were cut off on the Baldwin Road side, and in 1955 the remaining 73 1/2 acres on both sides of Allen Road went to two private buyers.

By the mid-1960s the town's schools were badly crowded. In 1964 the school superintendent warned that Billerica would soon need either an addition to the high school or a new junior high. The town authorized a $2,600,000 loan for a new junior high school in 1965, and later raised it to $3,000,000. A special town meeting on March 19, 1966 voted 152 to 2 to buy or take for school purposes the land east of Allen Road at no more than $1,000 an acre. On June 29, 1966 the selectmen took 49.54 acres by eminent domain "for the purpose of construction and maintenance of school buildings" and awarded the owners $40,000. The site is shown on a January 1966 plan by Emmons, Fleming and Bienvenu for the Permanent School Building Committee, which Vincent M. Padula chaired in 1965-1966 and John T. Glavine from 1968.

The town spent $1,186,069 on construction in 1967 and $1,430,108 in 1968. The school was built for 1,000 pupils, with 32 classrooms, two remedial reading rooms, a language laboratory, two art rooms, two music rooms, two woodworking shops, two homemaking rooms, a clinic, a library, five physical education areas, an auditorium seating 550, a lecture hall seating 86 and a cafeteria seating 300. The Permanent School Building Committee reported that "the Locke Junior High School while still incomplete was occupied in December 1968," and the formal dedication followed in the spring of 1969. By the end of 1968 it already had 1,133 pupils, and the Permanent School Building Committee asked the 1969 town meeting for $15,000 to improve the acoustics of the cafeteria and gymnasium.

The school's namesake, Cyril D. Locke, was a Yale graduate of 1912 with a master's degree from Acadia University. He succeeded S. A. Loring as principal of the Howe High School at Christmas 1925 and led it until 1953, teaching mathematics, and later served on the Board of Appeals. He died in 1973.

In September 1971 the town reorganized its upper grades, and Locke and the new Marshall school became middle schools for grades six, seven and eight. Locke won a federal Title III grant for its humanities course that year. It was accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in 1974. By 1975 it held twelve hundred pupils in a building meant for a thousand. Its flat roof failed within a few years: in 1976 the town meeting voted $20,000 for a legal claim over "the apparent defects in the roof at the Locke School," and the roof was rebuilt with borrowed money in the early 1980s. The town meeting often adjourned to the Locke auditorium in the 1970s. The grounds became the "Locke School Complex" of ball fields, with a Senior Little League field in 1985, rebuilt fields in 1988 and a new softball field in 2025. The fire alarm system was replaced in 2004-2005. Since the 2019-2020 school year the school has taught grades five through seven. The Town of Billerica still owns the 49.54-acre parcel, assessor's parcel 62-14-1, under the 1966 taking.

References

1. Billerica town report 1965: Junior High School Building Committee; $2,600,000 new junior high loan; warrant articles to buy or take 40 acres of the Cooke-Elfman land on Allen Road
2. Billerica town report 1966: special town meeting of March 19, 1966 votes 152-2 to acquire the Allen Road land; $3,000,000 junior high loan
3. Billerica town report 1967: construction spending; Locke Junior High scheduled for Sept. 1, 1968, built for 1000 pupils
4. Billerica town report 1968: Cyril D. Locke Junior High School facilities; 1,133 pupils; construction spending
5. Billerica town report 1969: Permanent School Building Committee: Locke Junior High occupied December 1968, dedicated spring 1969
6. Billerica town report 1971: middle schools for grades six to eight established in September; Title III humanities grant at Locke
7. Billerica town report 1976: Article 8, $20,000 for a legal claim over the defective roof at the Locke School
8. Billerica town report 1925: Cyril D. Locke succeeds S. A. Loring as principal of the Howe High School at Christmas 1925
9. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Samuel Kemp and Thomas Ross on the East Road near Miss Sophia Allen's; Marshall's Lane
10. Billerica assessor, 110 Allen Rd, parcel 62-14-1: Town of Billerica, 49.54 acres, school built 1968, deed 1758-398

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.