Rotherby School

The birth of schooling in Rotherby was due mainly to two generous charities.
Mrs. Catherine Gregory, in her will dated 1723, left the village a piece of land above the present School House which was let to a local farmer. The rent from this land was used to help to purchase the children of the village a book every Christmas and a Bible on leaving the school. The charity would also help children who had left the school by helping with their further education, for example the payment of apprenticeship fees. Village children can still receive these benefits and the field is still owned and let by the Church and is still called “The Charity Field”.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, before the building of Rotherby village school, there was a house at the top of the ‘Row’ in which one of the rooms was used for the teaching of the village youngsters. This would possibly have been what is now known as a “Dame School”.
The village school was built in 1848 and it was primarily a charity school for the poor children. The wealthy children of the village would almost certainly have been sent away to boarding school. Those poorer villagers who could afford it would pay a small sum for their chldren to attend the village school. In 1863 the school mistress was paid the sum of £10 per annum.
After Forster’s Act of 1870 the school was turned into an elementary school for mixed pupils. In the 1880’s Miss Brown was the school mistress and such subjects as needlework, scripture and knitting were taught. Part of Miss Brown’s task was to make sure the children to church every Sunday and those who did not turn up at church would be severely punished the next day.
The school was built to take up to forty pupils and, apart from the Rotherby children, those from nearby Brooksby were also taught there. In 1901 the average attendance was twenty three, with the population of the village standing at one hundred and eleven. At that time the percentage of children to the population was much higher than now.
As the twentieth century progressed the school was divided into two classrooms. In the 1950’s new changing rooms and an improved toilet block were built. During the 1960’s the authorities helped to provide the children with several amenities, such as a television set, a telephone, modern teaching equipment and adequate kitchen facilities. The premises were also fitted with an oil fired central heating system and a caretaker was employed to look after the building.
With the closure of Hoby school in the late 1960’s, the children from that village were forced to travel to Rotherby. The numbers at Rotherby school then numbered thirty to thirty five. Two teachers were employed, one to teach the infants from five to seven years old and the other to teach the junior children aged eight to eleven years. In the 1970’s the cut backs imposed by the local authority resulted in the building of a large new primary school at Frisby for all the children of the surrounding villages and Rotherby school followed the fate of Hoby and was closed in 1974. The building was sold in 1976 and has now been converted into a house, although the appearance of the building has been kept substantially the same.