EVERTON LOWER SCHOOL
There are records of three “schools” in the
parish - one in the form of a class in Woodbury Hall where, from 1832 to 1837
the Rev. Thomas Shore gave specialist tuition to the children of the gentry,
one in the village itself and the other on Everton Heath. At one time children used to attend classes
in the room below the church tower where one of the Astell daughters
taught. Hilda Brooker recorded how her
grandmother used to attend and take a halfpenny a week (£0.0025) for a slate
pencil and this was all they had to work with. Despite this, she still wrote
beautiful writing. Apart from hymn books they only had two books to read -
"The Bible" and "The Life of Christ." When she got older
she bought "The Christian Herald," The two books were bought from a
journeyman for 1d. a week (£0.005). There was also classes in one of the rooms
at the pub. Hilda Brooker's father attended when he was very young. He had to take 2d (£0.01) for a book and
pencil and ld a week for tuition. Children left school as soon as they could
earn a living. Their first job was
often scaring birds from the corn, with shouts and wooden clappers. (Brooker,
H. Everton Church Flower festival, July 1984 p.2)
The original village school house was in a
barn belonging to Church Farm on the land opposite the Parish Hall. It was
called Jubilee Barn, built at the time of Queen Victoria's silver jubilee in
1896? As pupil numbers increased, the board of governors decided on larger
premises - a building at the end of
Manor Farm. This was again a temporary room until the present school was built
in ???? and the schoolroom was lived in by Mr and Mrs Gurney. Jubilee Barn was
burnt down in 1956 and rebuilt by Mr Pym. Frank Hunt was the foreman of the
builders and it is said he put two half crowns in the brickwork.
The Anglicans founded the Bedfordshire
Institution in 1815. Subscriptions were collected to set up new schools and one
was built in Everton to train children in principles of established church. It
used the monitorial system where older students supervised the learning of the
youngsters. (CRO X.25; GA2568; Godber,Joyce ‘The History of Bedfordhsire‘
pp.431-2)
On Everton Heath there was another
schoolhouse opposite the Lodge entrance to Woodbury Hall. In 1868 John Harvey
Astell had a room added onto the side of the cottage where the children of his
estate labourers were given a basic tuition by his daughters. It was also used
as a Sunday School and later on as a village Hall. Before 1914 it was used by the Mothers Union, between the wars by
the Scouts, for "Housie Housie," (bingo) and Football Club dinners.
During the Second World War it was used by the Home Guard. Several wedding
receptions were held there. After the war it became an extra room for the
cottage. (Notes of Major Wills, Everton Heath)