Anglican and Baptist rivalries
The doubling of the village population from 800 to1600 in the first half of the 19th century created a matching demand for schooling. However there was considerable dissension about how this was to be achieved between rival religious factions: the Anglican parish church whose curates had been running the school for 200 years, and two groups of dissenting Baptists. Each wanted to control their own schools.
The Anglican endowed school in Church Street (opposite the alms houses) was taking 52 children in 1822. An extra room was added in 1833, taking a further 55. In the 20 years that followed, rivalry between the Anglicans and the Baptists led to no fewer than nine other subscription schools being established. They varied considerably in size, from ‘dame schools’ with less than 10 children to others with 50. By 1850 rivalry had reached the point of furious public meetings, and it took a further six years of continuous argument before agreement was eventually reached to fund and build ‘The Willingham British School’ in Fen End. The building cost £370 which was raised by voluntary subscription, mostly from larger farmers in the parish. It was opened in 1856 as a school for 250 boys and girls aged 5 to 13, and still stands today (the village primary school only moved to Thoday’s Close in1976). At the opening ceremony on 13 November 1856 over 250 villagers sat down inside it to a public tea. After the 1870 Elementary Education Act it became the Willingham Board School, Further funding resulted in a separate Girls School being built in 1878 on the corner with Earith Road (now Pegler Court, after George Pegler the first headmaster). It cost £850.The combined schools now had capacity for 400 pupils. A house was built for the headmaster in 1865, which is located behind the old school.
Fees
Although half the costs were met by grants, the balance came from parents on a means tested basis. There were several fee levels ranging from one penny per week to six pence, but there was no fee ’for deserving children from the labouring classes’. There were also some scholarships of £4 pa for exceptional children. Teachers were not well paid. At the end of the century a qualified teacher’s salary was £60pa; the headmaster’s salary was £90.pa. (the average male wage earner at that time earned around £80pa).
The Curriculum
The three R’s dominated the curriculum – reading, writing and arithmetic, plus sewing and knitting. Under its first head, George Pegler, the school flourished, with glowing reports from the School Inspector, and the curriculum was extended to include history and geography. Mr Pegler was obviously so pleased with a good HMI inspection in 1871 that he laid on a tea of bread and cake for 180 children, before holding a ‘public oral examination’ of pupils in front of parents that evening. They were to ‘answer loudly’ questions from a Mr Jagger of St. Ives on mental arithmetic, reading, scripture history, English history and geography. The Cambridge Express reported the next day that ‘the parents filling the room were astonished and greatly pleased at the promptitude of the answers to difficult questions, especially in mental arithmetic’. The report makes no mention of the torturous memorising and shaking terror that must have been suffered by some that day
School attendance
This was a major and persistent problem, despite the introduction of incentives like good attendance medals. Part of the problem was the long-established practise of child employment in rural areas to meet seasonal peaks. The attendance registers regularly list such reasons for absence – fruit picking, gooseberry pulling, raspberry pulling, blackberry picking, potato picking, reed peeling (for basket weaving), and cow-keeping. Attendance could fall to 70% and this could make teaching frustrating. In 1876 there is a note that the Headmaster ‘gave a marching lesson’.
Infectious Diseases
Illness was another recurring problem. Quite apart from the medical problems of a pre-antibiotic era, there were very real poverty issues. On the face of it ‘bad weather’ may not seem a very valid excuse in the attendance register, but it was not uncommon for boots and clothes to be shared between children in large poor families. In a time of unpaved roads and winter mud, ‘bad weather’ could take on a different meaning. Combined with inadequate food and poor hygiene, conditions were ripe for the spread of disease. The school records show a long list of school closures or restrictions because of epidemics amongst the children over a 15 year period:
- 1881 Dec to Apr: Scarlatina
- 1883 Nov: Croup ‘many deaths’
- 1884 Jan to Mar: Measles
- 1885 Jan to Feb: Typhoid
- 1890 Sep: Whooping cough
- 1892 Jan to Feb: Diptheria
- 1894 Apr to May: Smallpox
- 1894 Dec to Feb: Measles
- 1895 Dec to Jan: Mumps
Adult Education
Adults were catered for in the new school too. In 1859 a Fellow from St. John’s College gave a lecture to a crowded room on ‘Dr. Livingstone in Africa’, closely followed by another on ‘Modern Travel in Central Africa’. Both were illustrated with a large map and watercolour drawings ‘made by a Mr. Genn from this town’, and included a section on the Slave Trade. From 1864 there were monthly ‘Penny Readings’ at which Dickens and other novels and poetry were read out. They were very popular and attracted large audiences. Proceedings were concluded by a singing of the National Anthem. In1867 a Mutual Improvement Society was established and a newspaper reading room was opened.
On this evidence Victorian Willingham would seem to have had a significant number of educated liberal-minded people, despite the poverty extremes which persisted.
Next: Victorian Willingham – Farming and Transport