1837 application for a national school

At the beginning the 19th C there was no formal system of education for children.
1811: Church of England set up the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church.
1833: Government awarded the National Society £20,000 to help set up elementary day schools.
1837: A high proportion of Woodhouse Eaves wage-earners were impoverished framework knitters and agricultural labourers. The only sources of education (basic literary and religious) for children were Sunday schools at the Baptist and Methodist Chapels.
Reverends Robert Stammers and Samuel Piggott (St Mary’s, Woodhouse), Ann Christiana Watkinson of Woodhouse and William Herrick of Beaumanor applied to the National Society for a grant to set up a National School in Woodhouse Eaves
Union with the National Society approved on 5th July, 1837. Children to be taught the ‘liturgy and catechism’ of the C of E; church attendance compulsory.
HM Treasury granted £66 (one pound per two scholars at six square feet per scholar); National Society gave £34; Ann Watkinson gifted the remaining £320 plus the land. Running costs partly paid by a posthumous endowment of £1,000 from estate of the late Charles Allsop of Broombriggs, Ann Watkinson’s brother-in-law.

1838: The National School (not free, attendance voluntary) opened on Church Hill, with teachers living in; four times extended by the early 1900s.
1860: Purpose-built house for the teachers, paid for by William Perry Herrick’s sister, Mary Ann Herrick (£424 7s 9d).
C.1866: Separate building for infants in Main Street (on corner of Paterson Drive).
Late 1800s/early 1900s: Two extensions built.
1914: Infants moved back to the school on Church Hill.
1950s: School became ‘St Paul’s Church of England School’; infants move to Meadow Road.
1970s: Juniors also moved to Meadow Road; school became four houses.

Sketch of the building 1838

Woodcut showing the school on the left, 1838

The old school building, now as houses, 2018