The school was built by John Hall and his sister in 1868 in memory of their father and it opened in 1869. The building was enlarged in 1876 and 1884, and attendance rose from 46 in 1876 to 78 by 1889.
From an old document:
“School treats were held in the Lays field, and swings were enjoyed from the old oak trees. In the winter skating and sliding were enjoyed on the moat surrounding Moat House. On Shrove Tuesdays the Rector’s wife, Mrs. Barker, who lived to be 100, came to the school with a basket of oranges. Each child received an orange and a half holiday was given to the children. The girls wore white pinafores and the boys broad white collars. Prizes for attendance and good conduct were given and distributed once a year by Mr. Martin Slater of Weston Colville Hall and the children would sing:
This is our prize giving day
And it makes us feel so gay
As we wonder who has won the prize
Which makes us from a class to rise
When children went to the seaside for a day they would go in horse-drawn wagons to Six Mile Bottom Station and take the train for their chosen seaside resort.”
In the 1920s, there were three teachers. Miss Starling taught the eldest and Miss Chapel the youngest, taking them for nature walks. The formidable Miss Wormald was head teacher and commanded respect in the whole village. Len Loates remembers that weekend joy could be ruined by the dreaded threat “Oi’ll tell Miss Wormald o’yew on Monday morning”.
Owen Balls remembers: “I went to the village school in 1931 when I was 5. I can remember Nellie Taylor one of the big girls teaching us to read in the infants room with big ‘oil cloth’ pictures hanging over the blackboard. I remember breaking my pencil in half and I didn’t dare tell the teacher - she laughed when she found out. She was nice - her name was Miss Wright and she cycled from Steeple Bumpstead each day and back at night.”
After 1937, when the seniors went to Linton Village College, numbers fell to 27. The school closed in 1971 and the children started going to the primary school in Balsham. The school was subsequently run as an arts venue, the Lothbury Centre, for some years and it is now a private house.
Anthony Loates remembers: “When I went, it was wartime and Peter Coppen remembered me being good at drawing, though paper was short. Hot meals came from Linton Village College and we had a real treat one day when a jeep pulled into the playground. GIs dished out chewing gum and biscuits wrapped in cellophane. We were more interested in that than the biscuits. All the teachers were women and the best was Mrs Atkins from Ashton. I learnt my first French from her, singing Frere Jacques, I didn’t know what it meant in English. She got me, Brian Addley and Roger Bannister through the scholarship and I went to Cambridge High School for Boys (now Hills Road VI Form College).”
