Education

Hempstead C of E School: 1854-1946

Hempstead’s original school was attached to St Andrew’s Church. In 1768, the Reverend Philip Morant described it thus: “On the north side of the Chancel, and part of the Church, is a brick building, or Chapel; one part of it is used for an unendowed School.” However, it was in a bad way: in 1770 it was said to be “going into decay at a rapid rate” and this part of Essex had been generally slow to adopt the alternative model of ‘charity schools’, as exemplified by the Westley bequest to Whittlesford in Cambridgeshire.

In 1852, it was agreed to raise funds to build a Church school. The then newly appointed Vicar, Robert Eustace, was instrumental in this, even though he did not occupy himself too much with Hempstead’s spiritual affairs, leaving them in the care of a curate. Eustace helped to raise over £500 from local landowners and a variety of grants and the school opened in 1854 on the site of what is now the Village Hall: it is shown as a boys’ and girls’ school on the detailed OS map of 1876. That map shows the land now known as the Glebe as being attached to the school; we know from the Tithe Map of 1842 that this land formed part of the Drummon estate and was occupied by George Moore, the miller: we don’t currently know if it was conveyed to the school on opening, or at some time during the 20 years afterwards.

The buildings and School House (now Trevor House) were extensively refurbished in 1925: the Parish Magazine for April of that year welcomes a new Head Teacher, Mrs Curtis and refers to a new chimney stack to the house, new railings erected around the school yard and house garden by Mr Fred Hall, new drain pipes and ditching to carry away surface water. The same issue refers to the work being done to erect the new village War Memorial, as well as the slow start to the fund for rebuilding the church tower.

We know, from the accounts of those who attended the school in the 1930s and 1940s, that the school was divided into two rooms: a small one for the infants and a large room which housed two classses, separated by a curtain. The school had a fire at each end so that the infants, and half of the older children, could keep warm but Dorothy Fleming remembers that it was woe betide the children in the middle! There was also a playground, divided into two, where children would play skipping, rounders and other ball games.

The school closed in 1946. A charity was set up and, after a fundraising campaign, the school was bought for £300 by the new Village Hall trust. Various improvements were made over the years, including a kitchen and the replacement of the old ‘bucket and chuck it’ toilets. In 1980, the hall was taken over by the Parish Council and was used until the construction of a new, lottery-funded Hall which opened in 2000.

The photographs below give some idea of how the school building would have looked.

Reminiscences

The Voices section of the website contains reminiscences from several former pupils of the School.

Records of the School’s Board of Managers

The Essex Records Office contains comprehensive, and at times very funny, records covering the nearly 100 years of the School’s existence. First, a couple of instances of HR policy which might not find favour today:

During the first half of the 1920s, after many years of stable staffing, the School seemed to lurch from one recruitment crisis to another: virtually every meeting of the Board in this period records the resignation or dismissal of a head or assistant teacher, or both. The minutes suggest that recruitment of replacements was driven more by urgency and desperation than by competence. Disipline was clearly an issue:

Matters came to a head in October 1925 with the report of His Majesty’s Inspector Mr JW Veysey

Staff

The list below has been put together from census returns and Kelly’s Directories and shows the staff employed at the dates shown. However, as noted above there was very high turnover during the 1920s and this list is incomplete.

DateSourceSchoolmistressInfants’ mistress
1841CensusAnn Hibblethwaite
1861CensusMrs Louisa Willis
1874Kelly’sMiss E Wright
1882Kelly’sMiss Elizabeth Lloyd
1891CensusMiss Barbara BoydMiss Clara Metcalfe
1901CensusMiss Barbara BoydMiss Clara Metcalfe
1902Kelly’sMiss Barbara BoydMiss Clara Metcalfe
1911CensusMiss Barbara BoydMiss Clara Metcalfe
1914Kelly’sMr Charles FifeMiss Amy Till
1922Kelly’sMrs Carlotta AlexanderMiss Gladys Coe
1939National RegisterMrs Edith Funston

Miss Winifred Foster is also recorded in one of the news clippings below as having taught in the school for some 15 years until about 1937, before moving to the Boys’ British School in Saffron Walden.

School photographs

Hempstead School around 1914

We know that the above photo was taken before 1915 because that was the year that Margaret Drane’s mother [ ] left to go to South Road School in Saffron Walden at the age of 12. The schoolmaster on the right was Chas. F. Fyfe, a Scot.

Hempstead School, late 1920s

As well as the children named in the cutting, the above photo shows:

Middle Row, L-R: Leslie Turner, Thelma Andrews, Dorothy Andrews, Dorothea Lashmere, Joan Coote, Betty Johnson. Edith Purkiss, Audrey Turner, Gwen Foster, Sid Foster, Ellis Andrews, Tom Blackmore.

Front Row, L-R: Harold Purkiss, Leslie Coote, ? Blackmore, Jack Turner, George Wright, Ron Foster

“Demand”? What Sauce!!!

On 8 October 1937, the Essex Chronicle carried this short report. The mothers’ direct appeal to the Bishop of Chelmsford appears to have been an ambush which took the school Managers completely by surprise. “Demand”? noted the Chairman. “What Sauce”!!! The exercise book below reveals a fascinating exercise in pre-war public relations and a good example of the principle that a first draft should be written to improve one’s temper before being filed in the waste paper basket. We start with the the first outraged draft response (“libellous perversion of facts”, “trumped up yarn”, “a put up job organised as a local government vote catching device” and proceed through a series of more moderate amendments. Sadly the final letter is not available, but it seems that no urgent action was found to be necessary.