Village Education in the 19th C. & Foundation of Foxton Board School

In the early 1800’s education in places like Foxton was still in the hands of the Ministers of the Church or Chapel together with one or two private schools run by various ladies in the village. Some of these may have been “Dame’s Schools”, as they were known, which existed primarily to mind the youngest children during the two or three years from weaning until they were old enough to do some form of work, when the girls were taught lace making. In theory the children were taught to read and the boys learnt coarse sewing but often the persons running the schools had other occupations and the children were neglected or left in the charge of “old and decrepit men”.
Prior to the completion of “The Parliamentary Enclosure” of the Common Land in Foxton during the 1770’s most of the villagers were employed in agricultural work and children would help their fathers with the never ending labour required to provide the family with food from the strips of land everyone farmed communally. With the changes in farming practice following enclosure of the fields and the forming of larger holdings in private ownership given over to pasture rather than to crops, the number of workers required on the land fell dramatically and villagers had to look for employment in the emerging industries of stocking making, lace making and silk plush manufacture. Although much of such manufacture was being concentrated in the local towns like Market Harborough and Leicester this work was also carried out as a “cottage industry” in villages such as Foxton and for a time these activities provided a suitable alternative to work on the land and children started to be employed to help from a very early age, leaving little time or encouragement for education.
Indeed, during the Napoleonic Wars so many men were called to army service and there was such a shortage of Framework Knitters that many workers left the land to learn the trade, with Village Overseers paying employers for“putting young men apprentice”. In some places the Parish Vestry, forerunner of the Parish council, even installed ‘frames’ themselves and set up “Parish Enterprises” to profit from the demand for hosiery and at the same time employ the poorer people in the community, who would otherwise have to be supported from the “Poor Rate” under the then operating Poor Laws. Unfortunately due to the end of the wars, improvements in technology, changes in fashion and a growing population seeking work , wages fell dramatically, by 30 to 40% between 1815 and 1841, and unemployment became a tremendous problem.
The effect on “schooling” was that attendance at Sunday School fell off due to a lack of clothing and footware which parents thought fit for their children to attend in. Having been relatively prosperous for some years at the beginning of the century, with clothes kept for “Sunday Best”, many people ended up with not having had a new set of clothing for 25 years and were ashamed to send their children to Church barefoot and in rags. In Foxton the Overseers of the Poor did their best to provide clothing but with one third of the village population on Poor Relief in 1821, (some 34 families out of 99 according to the Vestry Minutes for that year), they had an impossible task. These terrible conditions continued for more than a generation with whole families literally starving to death. In Foxton of the 25 Family Names which appeared in a list of persons on Poor Relief in 1821, 12 no longer appear on the Census Return of 1841 and since “the poor” could not leave the parish without the permission of the Overseers we must assume that most of these families had simply died out over that 20 year period which saw some of the worst years of famine in England.
In 1842 after some repair work had been carried out on the Church, the Parish Vestry Board tried to obtain permission from the Poor Law Commissioners to use some of the money they had obtained from the sale of “Parish Houses” at the time of the setting up of the Market Harborough Union Workhouse in 1837 to adapt part of the Church as a schoolroom. Members of the Vestry pledged that if this permission was not forthcoming then they would pay an equal amount to the £5 already pledged by the Vicar towards the work. A Committee was set up to carry out the alterations and it was agreed to “break through the West wall of the church for a doorway and an opening in the South wall for a fireplace”. The Vestry Minutes do not follow this up but presumably matters gradually improved because on the 1851 Census, 47 of Foxton’s children were entered as “scholars”, out of a total population of 405 and a Sarah Gibbs was listed as a “schoolteacher” in the village. Sarah Gibbs also kept a Grocer’s Shop but had her niece Elizabeth Crane as “assistant in school” so her establishment may have been one of the so called ‘Dame’s Schools’. A Mrs Mary Smith was also mentioned as being a village schoolteacher in 1846, but in 1851 she was nursing a 3 month old baby named Ruth who later became the first teacher at Foxton Board School.
By 1867 the Ratepayers were applying to the “Board of Guardians” for the interest on the residue of the money received from the final sale of “Parish Properties”in 1852 to be used “to pay the salary of a Mistress at the National School about to be re-established”. Whether permission was granted and how this school operated in the village is not recorded but in 1870 the Vestry was appplying for permission to use the money itself “to build a new schoolroom or purchase a site for same”. Although Rev’d Cave Humphrey was still Vicar at that time, Foxton had a “Curate in Charge” named Henry Matthews and he was Chairman of the Vestry Board at that meeting. Again there is no further mention of any action taking place but in 1873 a Meeting of the Vestry took place “in the Schoolroom” to decide on “what steps should be taken in the Parish for adopting the Elementary Schools Act 1870”. This meeting, at which Rev’d Cave Humphrey himself was Chairman, decided that the Ratepayers should be asked for the 50 signatures necessary in order to call for a “School Board” for Foxton to be elected.
However it seems that there was a view amongst the members of the Parish Vestry that it would be better to have a school provided by voluntary subscription rather than have an elected School Board who could levy a Rate for the purpose. This probably reflected the controversy raging over religious teaching in schools at that time, (and subsequently), because in “Board Schools” this had to be non-denominational and this may not have suited everyone in the community. The proposal to “establish a Day School by Voluntary Efforts” seemed to be proceeding well towards the end of 1873 with a Committee chaired by Rev’d Matthews reporting that “the subscription list is sufficiently satisfactory that arrangements for building the required school should be at once begun”, -(subject to consultation with the Vicar). Whether Rev’d Cave Humphrey had second thoughts, in deference to the large non-conformist element amongst the Foxton Ratepayers, whether it was around this time that he died (a new Vicar Rev’d Dr. Edward Ellis was Chairman of the Vestry in March 1875) or whether in fact the necessary 50 Ratepayer’s signatures calling for a School Board were forthcoming and this pre-empted the issue is not recorded but the subject received no futher mention in the Vestry Minutes and we do know that in the spring of 1874 a School Board was elected in Foxton under the provisions of the 1870 Forster Education Act. Thus it was that Foxton almost had a Voluntary, (no doubt Church of England), Day School instead of a non-denominational Board School.
The first Foxton School Board of 5 members comprised Lt. Col. Dottin Maycock, John Watson, Joseph Spriggs, William E. Payne and Jonathan Horton. At their first meeting held on 11th June 1874 Dottin Maycock Esq. was elected Chairman with John Watson as Vice-Chairman and Treasurer. The new Board made a call on the Parish for £50 and proceeded to appoint architects to design the new school building. They arranged to purchase a site in “Play Close” from Miss Bull for £40 and accepted a tender from a Mr James Jennings to build the school for £650.
To pay for the land, building, architect’s fees and furniture they organised a loan of £780 from the Public Works Loan Commissioners secured on the Rates of the Parish. Whilst the School was being built, during 1875, the Board advertised for a Schoolteacher at £50 p.a., later increased to £70 p.a. The first person appointed didn’t take up the post so a Miss Ruth Smith of Foxton was appointed in November, 1875 on a temporary basis at £12 - 10s (£12 - 50p) p.a. Although not a formally qualified teacher, Ruth Smith was the daughter of Mary Smith who had been a teacher in the village prior to the setting up of the Board School so presumably had received a good education and training from her mother. It seems from Census Returns that Ruth Smith later married William Brown of the Foxton Brickmaking Family and that they ran a grocer’s shop at what is now “Moorhatch” in Main Street.
A Miss Middleton from Manchester was the first “certificated” teacher to actually work at the new school from the autumn of 1876. Miss Middleton also undertook “evening classes” in the Board School for older members of the local community, many of whom would not have received much education previously.
A sign of the friction between Church and Chapel in the village at that time was the School Board’s refusal to allow the new Vicar, Rev’d Dr. Ellis to hold a Sunday School in the school building although they agreed with him that the opening of the new building should be marked by a religious service and also that religious instruction should occupy the first half-hour of each day.
This first Board had a Non-Conformist majority and at the time a Sunday School was well established in the Chapel, which had been rebuilt in 1865 with classrooms, so presumably the Chapel Leaders didn’t want the “competition” from the Church Sunday School to be too attractively housed! However Dr. Ellis soon turned the tables because after the next triennial election in 1877 he became Chairman of the new School Board, which then had two “Chapel” members and two “Church” members, besides himself, and having given notice at their first meeting that he would raise the matter again, he used his casting vote to pass a resolution to allow a Sunday School to be held in the Board School. This decision was approved by the Local Education Authority at a rent of £1 p.a.
Miss Middleton only remained at the new school for about a year and then a Mr. Frederick Jones became the Schoolmaster, together with his wife as Schoolmistress. His salary was to be £60 p.a. and a house found for him in the village. Teachers also received half the government grant which was based on attendance records, pupils having to pay 2d (just under 1p) per week to be taught. Attendance was made compulsory in 1876 just after the school opened, but it wasn’t until 1881 that fees were abolished, so absenteeism was a big problem since parents required their children to help at home or on the land, particularly at harvest times.
Mr Jones left at Easter 1882, partly because the Board wouldn’t give him the £10 p.a. rise he had asked for earlier. Mr. & Mrs. Langman then became Schoolmaster and Sewing Mistress respectively. By 1892, due to an increase in the number of pupils, partly because children from Gumley were being admitted, Mr. and Mrs. Langman’s 18 year old daughter Lucy had been appointed as infant’s teacher at £5 p.a., later increased to £10 p.a.
The Langmans remained at the school for over 20 years, during which time Lucy had followed Ruth Smith’s example and married a member of the local brickmaking family, Silvester Brown. Due to a disagreement the Langmans all left in 1904, after new School Managers had been appointed by the local Education Authority, under the 1902 Education Act, to replace the old School Board. Since Mr Langman didn’t receive a pension Mrs Lucy Brown took over Foxton Post Office after she and her parents left the school , which continued to be run by Lucy and then her daughters Grace and Dorothy until recent times.
Attendance averaged 50 in 1904 when Mr J.H.M. Wildigg replaced Mr Langman as School- master with a Miss Wildigg, possibly his sister, as assistant but they didn’t stay very long despite their £100 p.a salary, because by 1906 a Miss Jackson was Headmistress. It seems that she also only stayed a couple of years because by 1908 a Mrs Clara Pritchard was Headmistress with average numbers up to 52. A Miss Crowcroft became Headmistress in 1912 with numbers having fallen to 40, but after the First World War school numbers reached 62 in 1922, the year after Mrs L Riley had become Head. Mrs Riley was single handed for a time but an Assistant Teacher Miss Dormer was then appointed. Miss Dormer cycled daily from Stoke Albany and continued to run the Infant’s School until her retirement in 1959. Numbers were down to below 25 in 1937 and did not rise above 40 again until the 1950’s. By the mid 1960’s they were back below 30 but the building of Gartree Prison brought an influx of warders’ children and by 1966 numbers were up to 67 and a new school was being planned.
This was built between Foxton village and Gartree and opened for the autumn term in 1967 and continues to the present day.
Other local born teachers at the “old” Board School were Miss Mary Marvell from 1917 to 1921 and her sister, Miss Ethel Marvell from the Second World War until the “new” school had opened. Miss Ethel Marvell spent a year at the school as an Assistant Teacher during 1944 - 45 and then after a spell at Church Langton School, returned to Foxton as Headmistress in 1947 and remained until the School had moved into its new building.

Sources:- 1. Parliamentary Report on Conditions in the Framework Knitting Industry 1840 - M.H. Library.
2. Minutes of Foxton Parish Vestry 1820 - 1919 - Leics. Records Office.
3. Minutes of Foxton School Board 1874 - 1904 - Leics. Records Office.
4. Census Returns for Foxton 1841 - 1891 - Leics. Records Office.
5. Foxton School Registers.