Schools

Enter your text here...

Tasburgh is justifiably proud of its school, Preston CE VC Primary School. Working closely with the parish Church of St Mary's, the school is also affiliated to Saxlingham Nethergate CE VC Primary and both schools are members of the Tas Valley Church Schools Federation. Preston Primary was officially opened on 19th June 1981 by the Bishop of Norwich, the Right Reverend Maurice Wood.

To accommodate an ever-growing number of pupils, the school was restructured in 1997 and the new extension was opened by HRH The Duchess of Gloucester on 13th March 2001. Today the school continues to grow, with children aged between 4 and 11 years across five class groups. It is an active community school and its governing body works hard to promote the high educational standards and ethos of a Church of England school.

For the last 190 years, the Church of England has played a pivotal role in the development of education in the village. As early as 1844, the Reverend Henry Preston, rector of Tasburgh for 57 years from 1837, allocated land adjacent to his newly built rectory for the construction of an elementary school near to the parish church of St Mary. This charitable act was matched by a liberal donation towards the formation of this National school by the then Queen Dowager, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, widow of King William IV. The school building stands today as a private dwelling, The Old School House, on Church Hill formerly known as School Hill.

Henry Preston's early concern about the lack of educational opportunities in Tasburgh reflected a growing trend in Norfolk between 1800 and 1890, when more than 400 rural schools were being built by the Church of England's National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor. The function of these schools was to ensure that children of poor families would receive just enough education to get by in an increasingly literate world, with teaching focused on the three Rs and, more importantly, conformity.

Despite further positive changes to schooling introduced by the 1870 Forster Education Act, education was not viewed as beneficial by everyone. Children were often expected to pay a small sum of money, a penny or two, towards their tuition, and this would have likely been difficult for some families. The loss of a child's labour was frequently resented by the poorer labouring families and farmers and, despite school attendance being compulsory up to the age of 10, many children were absent, with the authorities often turning a blind eye and taking no action.

Despite these drawbacks,Tasburgh School flourished with 62 children attending in its first year of opening, with many of these children walking from as far as the neighbouring villages of Tharston and Flordon. Some of these children were as young as five years old.

By the late 19th century, the agricultural depression had affected Tasburgh's population, which fell from 475 to 368 individuals. Despite this fall and the difficult financial environment, families continued to grow, with numbers at the school rising to 100 pupils by 1880. During this time, the school building was extended on two occasions, and was enlarged again in 1899 to take in 30 infants.

What do we know about the teachers at Tasburgh's first school? The 1851 Tasburgh census records that Eliza Goddard, aged 21, was living in the household of Reverend Preston, possibly as a boarder. The census does not mention her as being a schoolteacher at that early stage, although later, in 1854, she is recorded as being 'Schoolmistress' in White's Directory. Then, in 1856, her name appears in Craven & Co.'s Commercial Directory of Norfolk where she is recorded as being a 'National Schoolmistress' in Tasburgh with 54 scholars.

There seems to be no record of who was teaching at the school from 1844 until 1854 when Eliza Goddard's name first appears as the school mistress. The names of two school masters do appear in the Tasburgh 1841 census and it may be they were providing some form of elementary teaching in the village even before Reverend Preston's new school had been built.

The 1841 census reveals the occupant of one half of Glebe Cottage (the old rectory under the direct control of the Reverend Preston) to be a 25-year-old schoolmaster, Charles Feltham, living with his wife Maria; the census also refers to another schoolmaster, John Gooch, aged 64, who was living at Mill View on Flordon Road at the time, and it is possible that he too may have been teaching in Tasburgh during that early period.

Kelly's Directory and the Tasburgh censuses reveal the names of two further school mistresses working at the school in the late 1800s: the first, Clara Ormsby, makes one fleeting appearance in the records – as a schoolmistress in 1892. There is more information about Esther Kirby, the second schoolmistress, whose name appears on a number of occasions, first in 1881, mentioned under her maiden name of Esther Jane Hammond. We learn that when she married, she stopped teaching, producing six children in 8 years during her thirties; she then returned to teaching at Tasburgh as Head Mistress, using her married name Mrs George Kirby (she was the wife of the Tasburgh sub-postmaster). Her name appears again in 1901, aged 42, and finally the 1911 Census records that she was Head Mistress, a post she held until her retirement at the age of 60.

Anna Fordham, a 16-year-old girl, is recorded in the 1871 census as living in Tasburgh as a School Teacher, but we do not have a record of where she taught.

Anna Cann is another young person of interest in the Tasburgh school story during the 19th century. She first appears in the 1861 Tasburgh census at the age of 13, and is believed to have been a pupil/teacher. We can conclude that she was moderately literate given that her mother Ann Cann was a sub-postmistress in the village and would have been fairly well educated herself.

The 20th century ushered in harsh times as the country went to war. There is little evidence of how the school fared during WW1, but we do know that there were 12 Tasburgh men who died in action, and some of them had almost certainly been pupils at the school.

During the inter-war years, children attended the school from the age of 5 until they were 14 years old, and there are accounts in the booklet The History of Tasburgh about Bob Lammas and Mrs Elizabeth Page attending what was at that time a very crowded school; Mrs Page remembered how the scholars were seated on long benches placed on a series of steps rising up to the back of the room, with the oldest children sitting at the highest level at the back.

The school logbook dating from 1922 was a record of all the day-to-day events at the school, including naming the important people who visited the school, and in this context we hear of the school's generous benefactor Sir Charles Harvey of Rainthorpe Hall. The logbook also highlights the many problems encountered on a daily basis, ranging from the difficulties of heating the building in freezing temperatures to dealing with naughty pupils. One such incident took place in November 1927 when 3 boys (Harold Riches, Arthur Hurry and Fred Larter) each received 'our strokes on hands and buttocks for milking Mr Curson's cow when standing in a meadow … and for telling lies about it.'

Of course, happier occasions were experienced too: school outings by train to the seaside paid for by Sir Charles Harvey and school concerts held in the theatre at Rainthorpe Hall. These were enjoyable times, taking place before the start of the Second World War in 1939.

William Moore's blue booklet Hard Times and Humour – Tasburgh 1939-1970 is a rich source of information for the war years from 1939-45. He recalls the first impact of the war on the school children - the siren sounded at 8.45 a.m. on Monday 4th September 1939, and he and other frightened children were sent home from school until further notice.

The head teacher during the war was Mrs Cross and, at the outbreak of the war, there were only 14 pupils at the school, but numbers swelled to 70 pupils with the influx of a group of evacuee children billeted at Tasburgh Hall and elsewhere in the village. To accommodate the increased numbers, Tasburgh children attended school in the morning and the evacuees in the afternoon. Eventually most of the evacuees were taught at Tasburgh Hall by additional teachers who were employed for this purpose.

For those children it must have been a time of great stress and anxiety, and football matches, cricket matches and Christmas parties were organised to help the evacuated children feel part of the Tasburgh community and to integrate with the local children in the absence of their families.

Living in wartime Tasburgh must have been a terrifying experience for all the school children and, like everyone at that time, they were exposed to the repercussions from bomb explosions during the Norwich Blitz, tracer bullets and the threat of explosions from the German flying bombs (otherwise known as doodlebugs). We know that the teacher Miss Hewitt was severely affected by the 'the shock of the Blitz'.

She was, according to William Moore, a gentle soul who taught both the boys and the girls needlework, knitting, crafts and basic cooking. The effect of food rationing on the school children was carefully monitored, with each child receiving 1/3 of a pint of milk and cod liver oil or Virol supplements every day. There were regular visits to the school by the school doctor and dentist to ensure children were as healthy as possible during these challenging times.

Despite all these difficulties, the school children were still expected to walk to school every day, some from as far away as Flordon, each carrying their satchel and sandwiches in one hand and their gas masks and ID cards in the other. The children were encouraged to play their part in the war effort by helping the Womens' Voluntary Service (WVS) go round the village collecting everyday household salvage as part of the national Salvage Scheme and to save their pennies to help build a village hall.

The post-war years brought happier times. The infant teacher was Miss Hewitt, who, having by now recovered from her wartime nerves, travelled to the school every day from St Faith's on a motor cycle - a hazardous undertaking as she found it difficult to dismount from her motor cycle safely, and needed the assistance of the senior boys to climb off the motor cycle. Aside from her difficulties with motor cycling, Miss Hewitt was affectionately remembered for taking the children on excursions to Bluebell Wood. Other outings included a school visit to London in 1954 and trips to the Wymondham swimming pool.

School attendance rose to 57 in 1959, but the school facilities were still basic, and it was during this time that William Moore recalls fetching water in buckets from the rectory. The school toilets were very rudimentary, and were emptied daily by Mr Clark, who lived one house down from the school. It was obvious to all that improvements to the school were becoming necessary.

During the late 1950s, changes started to be made to the school, the large room being sub-divided by a curtained partition to make two classrooms. In addtion, two cloakrooms were added, along with a scullery from which school meals were served.

School food was prepared by Mrs Nellie Bowman in Newton Flotman and was delivered to the school in a grey Mini van, to be served up by the dinner ladies - Mrs Riches, Renee Wright and Doris Lammas. Carole Hill remembers working at the school from 1966, initially as a dinner lady, but later helping with reading lessons. Around this time, Mrs Trevor Smith, mother of Trevor and Paul, was a caretaker, and Mr Clark continued with his unenviable task of emptying the toilet pails.

By 1961 the population of Tasburgh had grown to 343 but widespread building in the village after 1961, particularly in Upper Tasburgh, almost doubled the population to 610 in 1971 and trebled it to 1,117 in 1991. The impact of the growing village on the school was undoubtedly significant. It was during the 1960s that we first hear of Miss Bone who became the head teacher after Mrs Cross; and who was assisted by Mrs Taylor, subsequently known as Mrs Connie Philippo. These two ladies are mentioned by many ex-pupils still living in the village today, including Harry Page, Bridget Greensitt and Keith Read, and the sometimes difficult relationship between Miss Bone and Mrs Philippo is cited in a number of stories by Tasburgh residents today.

Miss Bone, a grey-haired spinster in her 50s, was very traditional in her approach to education, and, not surprisingly, very rigid in how she ran the school. If Mrs Philippo's class became too excitable and rowdy, Miss Bones's head would appear above the partition between the two rooms and quiet would be quickly restored.

There was no nonsense in Miss Bone's world, so it must have been a shock to her when, in September 1964, Dyan (later to become Mrs McKelvey), a young student at Keswick College, arrived at the school to carry out her first teaching practice. Mrs McKelvey tells how she was dropped off at Tasburgh by George, the College bus driver, at 7.45 a.m. and told to 'make for the church'; she found her way there with the help of a couple of pupils who had been sent out to the shop for provisions. Her first encounter with Miss Bone was memorable, she was told in no uncertain terms, 'We don't wear short skirts!' Mini skirts were not acceptable dress!

Mrs McKelvey quickly learned that Miss Bone had set ideas about education and brooked no nonsense from the children. She taught 25 pupils at a time in the small room, but she was mindful of her own creature comforts: a number of her ex-pupils recalled her strategically placing her seat very close to the only working tortoise heater situated in the small room. There was no such comfort for Mrs Philippo, who taught in the bigger room for infants, in which room the tortoise stove smoked so badly it was hardly ever lit by Nellie Bowman the caretaker (In her words, 'it was a bugger to light, a bugger to keep alight and it smoked all day – a child could be lost in the smoke!')

As the weather got colder during the Christmas of 1964, Miss Bone wore more sweaters and, ever mindful of her bad back, she would protect herself from the cold by wearing a scarf around her waist, with a hot water bottle at the back of her seat. She was in the habit of constantly checking the thermometer whatever the weather, and, even in the summer, the temperature had to rise to 60 degrees F before the children were allowed to remove their coats in the playground.

By 1967, Mrs McKelvey had finished her teacher training, was married, and had begun her first teaching post at Tasburgh. The school needed a third teacher, someone to teach the very young and this fell to Mrs McKelvey, while Mrs Philippo taught the 7–8-year-olds and Miss Bone took the 8-11-year-old children. Another mobile classroom had been ordered to accommodate the increased number of pupils, and until it arrived Mrs KcKelvey shared the big classroom with Mrs Philippo, whom she described as a 'life saver'.

Mrs Philippo was a forward-thinking teacher and keen to introduce modern techniques, such as allowing the infants to play with sand. She introduced a modern method of teaching reading, a system called the Initial Teaching Alphabet (I.T.A.). Introduced by Pitman, it was a simplified phonetics system aimed at speeding up reading whilst still enabling the children to move easily on to standard English spelling later on.

Miss Bone accepted this new system, but when Mrs Philippo left to take up the headship at Hapton School, Miss Bone quickly reverted to more conventional learning methods, scrapping the I.T.A. system. Very soon afterwards Miss Bone retired.

After Miss Bone's retirement, Mr Ramm was appointed as the new head teacher. Pupil numbers had risen to 120, and it was during his headship that a decision was made by Norfolk County Council to build a new school in Tasburgh. This coincided with the Norfolk Educational system changing schools to First, Middle and High Schools (as opposed to Primary and Secondary). Tasburgh became a First School with children aged 5-8 going on to St Mary's Middle School in Long Stratton.

Mr Ramm's time at Tasburgh is recorded in a photograph dated 1975, when a Victorian Day at the school commemorated the 130th anniversary of the school. Many of the pupils can be identified, though some are yet to be named.

Tasburgh's new school was built and opened officially in 1981. By this time, Mrs McKelvey was on maternity leave, and a new head teacher, Mrs Dix, took over from Mr Ramm. She was followed by Mrs Towle as head teacher. Finally in the 1990s Mrs McKelvey became the head teacher, and she retained that position until her retirement in 2006. She went on to take a degree in Child Studies and become a lecturer. There is little doubt that Mrs McKelvey and her rabbit Edmund are still fondly remembered by many of her ex-pupils – she was, as one pupil put it, 'a breath of fresh air'.

Besides Mrs McKelvey's memories, Bridget Greensitt, Keith Read, Harry Page, Carole Hill and others have provided interesting anecdotes and memories about the school. For instance, the school trip to Lowestoft with Mr Ramm came to Bridget's mind; she also recalled Mrs McKelvey in her 3-wheeler picking up the Prentiss children and the sisters Vivian and Diane Hodd. There were trips to Long Stratton High School for swimming lessons, cycling proficiency lessons with badges in the school playground, and playing on the 'evil'' climbing frame bars. The toilets were a source of much amusement, particularly to the boys,

Other anecdotes include the lack of a blackboard in the classroom and the dreaded times tables being chanted. On the brighter side, there was a television, and the children did music mime and movement sessions in their PE kits. Everybody seemed to remember Edmund the rabbit and Miss Bone! So many fragmentary memories but all creating a vivid picture of that time.

The move to the new Preston Primary School brought about many changes in the life of the school and village, but it is the memories of people still living in Tasburgh today that are so fascinating and which bring alive the realities of pupils' and teachers' experiences and relationships.