PART TWO:   THE SCHOOL AT THE CENTRE

Life in those far-off days seemed to revolve around the school with the annual tea-parties for scholars and friends of the school and for the older inhabitants of the village, together with musical evenings and field parties. One such musical evening included the songs of Mr. J. Collins “of an amusing and comic character and well rendered: they were the means of keeping the company alive and in roars of laughter”. The proceeds of that particular evening were used to buy a handsome eight-day clock for the school.

There were regular Sunday evening services at 6.30 p.m. and on Easter Day two celebrations of Holy Communion in the Day School at 8 a.m. and after Morning Service. Average attendance at school was 128 and a report of 1875 noted that the Infants were good in Old Testament though not much was known of the New Testament. The Catechism was repeated but not understood and one or two hymns were repeated but not sung. The Master promised singing in future! One of the field parties was reported in the July 1875 magazine. “The scholars of the Parish Church school proceeded up Market Street and down Kersley Lane (probably Leigh Road - the naming of roads and numbering of houses had not been properly organised at that time). There they met the Daisy Hill scholars who presented a very gay show with their numerous flags and banners, quite putting the mother school into the shade, as it did not show a single banner. The Daisy Hill scholars, however, kindly lent a few of theirs.”

Evening classes began in the school in the autumn of 1877 for reading, writing and arithmetic, on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Fees were 3d per week from 12 to 21 years and 4d per week for those over 21. There was a Reading Room, the members paying one penny a week and the library contained about two hundred volumes “which afforded much profitable amusement to the members”. Harvest Thanksgiving was celebrated in school with services at 10.30 a.m., 3p.m. and 6.30 p.m. and the singing of two anthems.