By the middle of the nineteenth century, many towns and villages benefitted from schools established by churches or charitable organisations. However, it was not until Forster’s Education Act of 1870 that local school boards were created with the power to levy rates to finance building and running of so-called National Schools in their areas. Thus universal education became available to all children up to the age of 13.
It would be fascinating to research our village schools through documents in the Berkshire Records Office. For now, however, I decided to begin my research by looking at the 1881 census as by this time those schools opened as a result of Forster’s Act would be well established.
At the time of the 1881 census, the occupant of the Kintbury St Mary’s school house is 25 year old James Humphries, originally from Ditton Marsh, Wiltshire. James is described as a “certificated teacher” meaning he has gained a professional qualification at a teacher training college. His sister, Catherine, 20, who is living with him, is described as “assistant teacher” which might indicate that she trained to teach by learning “on the job” as a pupil teacher which was how the majority of teachers qualified at that time. How Kintbury parents would have viewed this fresh faced young man and his even younger sister, both in positions of authority over the village sons and daughters, we can only imagine!
James and Catherine did not stay in Kintbury for long, or so it seems. In November 1883 the Newbury Weekly News reported on a recent Diocesan Inspection at the school which found it to be, “in very good condition. The children are well taught throughout.” The master at this time was a Mr T. Sadgrove. But he did not stay long either. In May of the following year the NWN carried a report concerning the schoolboy Alfred Sturgess who was charged with stealing 2 shillings and 6 pence from the National School Board ( in other words, from St Mary’s school ), the case being proved by the master who was then W. Garrett Jones.
Perhaps Messrs Humphries, Sadgrove and Garrett Jones all found Kintbury too challenging to stay long, or perhaps they were ambitious and wanted to move on to bigger schools in towns. So far I can find no record of any of them to suggest where they were living when they moved on from Kintbury, or if they even stayed in teaching.
Things were different down the road in Inkpen. In 1881 the occupant of the village school house is 49 year old certified teacher Jesse Collins. Jesse was a retired naval captain originally from East Tilbury, Essex, whose teaching post in 1871 had been in Portsmouth.
Interestingly, Jesse’s wife, Charlotte, is also described on the census as “School mistress”, although at this time women were not – officially – allowed to teach after they had married.
Life in the relatively isolated, rural community of Inkpen must have been very different to life in Portsmouth for the Collinses, although it seems to have suited them as they were still there in 1891. Despite, that is, Jesse having appeared before the local magistrates in 1884, charged with having assaulted one Alfred Abraham, a school boy, and having been fined 5s and 16s 6d costs. Perhaps the experience of his former naval career led Jesse to take this in his stride as he is otherwise involved with the local community and, according to the NWN, with local politics.
If Inkpen was a relatively isolated rural community, then Enborne was more so. Back then as now, the school with its adjoining school house was in an isolated spot in Crockham Heath, on the road up to Wash Common where, in 1881, the school mistress was 58 year old Ann Elizabeth Pears. Ann was an experienced teacher: in 1871 she had been teaching near Salisbury in Wiltshire and in 1861 in Suffolk.
According to a report in the NWN of March 1887, two men broke into the school house when Ann was away from home and stole 10 shillings and a quantity of brandy. This must have been particularly unpleasant for a woman living on her own in an isolated house and might have contributed to Ann’s decision to move on. By the time of the 1891 census, Ann has relocated to Hampshire but not yet retired from teaching. At 68 Ann is head teacher at East Woodhay school.
Today there is no primary school in the village of West Woodhay – by modern standards it would probably be considered too small a community to support its own school. The censuses of 1881, 1891 and 1901 indicate that there were no teachers living in the village in those years which suggests to me that there was not a school or accompanying school house ( the usual Victorian arrangement, common in many local villages.) The evidence suggests that West Woodhay’s children attended East Woodhay school as, in December 1903, the NWN reported that a request had been made for a footbridge to be placed “over the water between East and West Woodhay” as “children went down there on their way to school and got their feet damp.”
However, for fifty years, from about 1903 to 1961, West Woodhay did have its own school, marked on early 20th century OS maps as being somewhere near the village hall but on the opposite side of the road. Perhaps surprisingly, the NWN does not seem to have covered the opening of the school although the 1911 census shows assistant teacher, Celia Cook, 29, from Walworth, London, living in the school house.
Another local school I have, so far, found out very little about is Christchurch. Built at Kintbury Crossways close to the now demolished church which shared its name, Christchurch School opened in 1870 to relieve crowding at the established school down in Kintbury. Whilst the Reading Mercury reported on the opening, for some reason the more local paper, the NWN, did not.
I can find no record of the head teacher at the time of the school’s opening. However, the NWN of February 1884 reported that complaints had been made that a mistress, Agnes Peacock, had been ill treating the children. Unfortunately, a parent, Mary Ann Nash of Kintbury, had decided to take things into her own hands after Miss Peacock had patted her son on the hand by way of discipline. The teacher reportedly pushed the boy and he fell over. Nash went to the house where Miss Peacock was lodging and struck the teacher on the head with a stick. She was subsequently charged with assault and fined 9 shillings 6 pence with 10 shillings 6 pence costs.
As the smallest village in our benefice, then as now, it is perhaps most surprising that Combe had its own school. Although I can find no trace of when it first opened, the NWN of September 1894 reported that the school in the village had been, “nobly restored” with, “all the necessary requirements”. Local dignitary, Mr A.C.Cole had, “spared no expense” and the village children no longer had to walk to the neighbouring school, 2 or 3 miles distant. The school house furniture was supplied as a gift from Mrs Cole, as was that of the school, “according to government requirements”. Three cheers, then, for the Cole family.
In 1901, the schoolmistress at Combe was 34 year old Elizabeth Dingwall. Born in Chelsea, Elizabeth had been teaching in Fulham in 1891. At Combe, she shared the school house with her sister Isabella, a nurse and, although life the tiny village must have been very different from Chelsea or Fulham, the Dingwall sisters are still there in 1911.
One thing that has surprised me in researching this is that none of the teachers, either masters or mistresses, are local people. Whether this was a deliberate policy or coincidence, it is impossible to say for certain, although the weight of evidence suggests to me that the school boards deliberately chose to appoint people from out of the local area. For those single schoolmistresses, living alone in a village schoolhouse, life must have been very lonely. Whilst we know very little about the lives of Ann Elizabeth Pears, Celia Cook, Agnes Pocock or Elizabeth Dingwall, we do know a bit more about a schoolmistress living and working about 20 miles from here, in Denchworth, formerly North Berkshire, in the 1860s. Mary Hardy had been born near Dorchester in Dorset and trained to teach at the teacher training college in Salisbury so she was a “certified teacher”. Denchworth village school, 80 miles from her home and family, was her first post for which she was paid £40 a year and expected to play the church organ. Mary found the experience of living in Denchworth to be so lonely that she persuaded her parents to allow her younger sister, Kate, still a school pupil herself, to come to Berkshire to live with her.
We know a little more about Mary Hardy than we do about most Victorian village schoolmistresses because her brother, Thomas, was to become the celebrated novelist and so some of her correspondence is preserved in Dorset Museum. But while the names of most of the other women – and men – are mostly forgotten, many of the nineteenth century school houses are still standing. During my time as a supply teacher I was lucky enough to work in many village schools still using their original buildings, though now much adapted and extended. The school house has been, in some instances, sold off but in others the former living accommodation is now used as classrooms, staff rooms or storage. As you walk from late 20th century extensions back into those Victorian rooms, there is, I think, a distinct change in atmosphere, an awareness that you have entered somewhere that has been in constant use for over 150 years.
Tessa Lock September 2023
Kintbury and Beyond 