Nostalgia: Soap, stumbling feet, and boiled bacon

Money and materials were always just out of reach.

In 1887, the grant was reduced again — this time for failing to provide sewing instruction and adequate preparation of the youngest pupils for their exams. It wasn’t simply about reading and writing anymore; now, even thread and needle carried the weight of expectation.

In these walls, teaching was survival. Infant teachers were paid just £20 per year. They bore the brunt of overcrowding, silence, tears, and the laughter that came when no one was watching. They kept order with soft voices or sharp ones, depending on the day — and sometimes, when they left, the children cried.

Outside the schoolroom, letters flew between parents and the board. One mother insisted on keeping her child home as she pleased, regardless of rules. Another father proudly defended his home education, saying his children were taught daily and with better results than the parish could offer. One child, barely three, could count to twenty. His elder brother was already a reporter in training.

On one autumn day in 1889, a beloved teacher was presented with gifts — a teapot, a biscuit barrel, and an album. The gesture caught her off guard. She was leaving to be married, and as the gift passed into her hands, tears gathered in her eyes. Even in a world of cold desks and stricter rules, there was warmth.

Part three – Soap, stumbling feet, and boiled bacon

By the turn of the century, the school by the Dart had changed — yet remained much the same. The ink on registers had dried, but the battles over attendance, fees, and cleanliness endured like the damp in its stone walls.

In the spring of 1890, fee notices fluttered on village boards, quietly announcing the rising cost of education. By the following week, a dozen children were sent home for want of a penny. The parents — proud, struggling, exhausted — resisted the new fee structure, even when it promised to be fairer. For some, even a single copper coin marked the difference between survival and shame.

Later that year, the silence of a lesson was shattered by the crack of glass. Windows burst from their frames — not from unruly students, but from nearby blasting by builders. One pane in the mixed classroom, three more in the infants’ room. The old building took the brunt of progress, as always.

Through 1891, muddy pathways tested the patience of the staff. Tiny boots stumbled up the incline, slipping in the sludge that gathered like a curse after every rainfall. For over a year, the walk to school was more punishment than privilege. Pleas were sent, complaints penned. Still, the mud remained.

As the 1900s dawned, the school reached again for order and recognition. Teachers asked for fair wages. The headteacher had led the school for over a decade, always securing the highest grants, yet his pay remained modest. At last, a raise was granted — not out of generosity, but in reluctant acknowledgement.

Cleaning specifications were issued with military precision in 1905. Scrubbing, sweeping, dusting, and washing — every Saturday, every evening, every morning. Fire grates were to be blackened, windows gleamed, ashes carted away. Carbolic acid became the school’s perfume — sharp, bitter, and oddly reassuring.

The effort was tireless, the wages small, the expectations vast.

By 1907, the managers called for even stricter sanitation. Every desk, dado rail, and window frame were to be washed in acid. Candles were burned for light, their glow flickering against lime-washed walls now to be replaced with something called Duresco — a newer, cleaner material. The lavatories, too, were to be scrubbed with carbolic and lined with care.

In 1908, the gallery in the infant room faced removal. The inspector who visited declared the school among the best in the county — a small comfort amid the endless repairs. Lamps for the paths were promised, the funds collected by the vicar and churchwarden. These small acts of kindness lit more than muddy ground.

Then came the final breath of the old world. In 1910, a letter was penned requesting electric lighting — to replace the oil lamps that had long been the school’s fragile heartbeats. The town itself was already glowing. Streetlights flickered into the future. The school, ever lagging behind, stretched out its hands to the dawn of modernity.

But among all these records — of wages, fees, attendance, and cleanliness — there is one that speaks of life more than any: the cookery syllabus.

It is a document of boiled meats, bacon rissoles, and gingerbread. Of washing up, suet puddings, and milk for invalids. Lessons in boiling and steaming, the importance of economy and nutrition. Children learned not just how to count, but how to cook, to feed, to live. Meals for infants. Stew for the sick. Bread, both white and brown. The school taught arithmetic, yes — but also how to keep house, how to nurse, how to nourish.

In its own way, it taught survival.

Closing Reflection:

So ends the record of a small school by the river — not with triumph or closure, but with light. Electric light. From half-day scholars with chapped fingers to infants turned away for lack of space, this school bore the weight of a rural community’s growing pains. The logs don’t speak of dreams, but they do whisper of effort — of a place that tried, again and again, to do right by its children, even when the odds were poor.

And perhaps that’s enough. A stone building. A muddy path. A teapot gifted to a tearful teacher. And children — always children — learning, stumbling, growing by the tide.