Gillingstool School in the Nineteenth Centuy

A talk on 12 March 2024 by Tony Cherry.
Report by Stephen Griffiths.

The nineteenth was the century in which the unwashed masses became ‘educated’. At the beginning of the period the idea did not have widespread approval. Those who could read and write believed that the best training for a life of unremitting toil was a childhood of toil, unremitting. School was popular with neither children nor parents. A child could do useful work or bring in extra income, and education was not cheap. Only the children of the well-off would be able to attend Mr. Champion’s private academy, 5 Pullins Green, at ten pence per week. So what happened to change this sorry state of affairs? Tony Cherry attended the Society’s March meeting to beat the facts into us.

It was the non-conformist churches who led the way. Just as the medieval monasteries needed people who could read the offices, the bible-driven non-conformist churches needed people to be able to read the bible. The established church, of course, was not to be out-shone, and soon joined the school-building arms race with their ‘National’ schools, as opposed to the non-conformist ‘British’ schools. Adverts for schoolmasters appeared in the newspapers. Qualifications were not necessary, but he would be expected to show his testimonials.

So it was in 1862 at Gillingstool that Thornbury British School was built, with a donation of £700 from wealthy mine-owner and committed non-conformist Handel Cossham, whose 200th birthday falls this year. As a ‘British’ school it received no government aid, was not subject to any government control or inspection, (those were the days), and was run by a board of non-conformist trustees. It taught reading, writing, arithmetic, scripture, history, geography and needlework (girls only). The cost was two pence per week per child.

If you had several children the costs would add up, and the list of excuses for non-attendance was long and imaginative. It was accepted that children, especially those above ten years, might be required for agricultural purposes, but there were many more dubious excuses. There might be a show, festival, fair or circus in town. There were a number of sickness and benefit clubs which each held a celebratory day. There was money to be earned on market day. The occasion of a big funeral, or the tea party of a temperance society would give ample opportunities for pleasure.

The headmaster’s logs are full of comments on attendance. The school could be closed by the rural sanitary inspector during periods of severe weather, when it would be dangerous for children to walk up to 4 miles along country lanes to school. More sinisterly, outbreaks of scarlet fever, measles and other disease for which we now have vaccines, could close the school for weeks. Reports in the logs of the death of children are not uncommon.

In the 1870s the school became a ‘Board’ school, whereby it would obtain a subsidy if it complied with government standards. The initial inspection reports were not glowing. An inspector wrote that ‘every half hour left me half less satisfied’. The school’s grant was subsequently halved. By 1880 primary education became compulsory but this fuelled the log book with fines for non-attendance. I would not envy the guardian of the Thornbury Union whose job it was to visit parents with fines, and browbeat them into compelling their wayward children.

In the early 20th century it had become a ‘Council’ school under the local education authority, and grew into the school it is today, having survived two world wars when teachers left to fight, and the numbers of children were swelled by evacuees. Many of our audience looked back with fondness at days in the old Gillingstool school building, but none admitted to any of those crafty excuses.