Miscellany 6

Schooldays Remembered: by Nancy

Nancy as a child

My family moved to Murthwaite in Longsleddale in 1939 when I was 3 years old. My father, George Edward Dawson, had been born in the valley, at Docker Nook, in 1892. He started school in March 1897, and can be found in the register page below. Then he left the valley to farm elsewhere, and he served in the first World War.

During the second World War we had evacuee families living with us at Murthwaite and nearby, and I am still in contact with them. My earliest memories are of playing with other children in the fields, and our favourite place was the island in the river.

From the age of five, I walked or cycled the 2 miles to the village school. There were 2 entrances with small cloakrooms, the present front door for boys, the back one - now the kitchen - for girls. The toilets in the separate block were buckets! As many as 17 pupils were taught in the single room, by one teacher, the infants starting in the north-west corner around a big stove, moving to the other end of the room as they grew older. Mrs Worden was the excellent teacher for most of my time there.

We did not have a sports area but did Music and Movement to the radio. Electricity did not arrive here until Christmas 1959 so the radio ran on batteries, which faded towards the end of the week. The farmers wives took their batteries into Kendal on Saturdays to be charged at Gilbert Parkinson's Cycle Shop at the bottom of Kent Street, whilst they sold their eggs and butter in the Market Hall. But the old glass/acid ones had to kept hidden on Sammy Mitchell's weekly bus as he did not like carrying them!

I left the school just before it closed in 1946, when I passed the scholarship examination to the Girls High School on Thorny Hills in Kendal. I was married in the valley and brought up 2 children at Murthwaite, where my son, his wife and 2 of my grandchildren now live. My husband and I live next door.

Schooldays Recorded: the Registers and Log Books

Kendal Record Office holds the School Admissions Registers, but only records older than 100 years can be seen. Those up to 1911 have been transcribed with other local records on this website ...

School Admissions Register 1883-1911

Kendal Record Office also holds the School Log Books 1885-1946 (WDS70/1) which were kept by the teacher. There was usually only one certificated teacher, man or woman. In the early days someone else would teach the girls needlework, and maybe an ex-pupil would act as a teaching monitor. The parson visited regularly to give Religious Instruction. Teachers rarely stayed long, sometimes less than a year. The age of pupils ranged from 5 to 14, and even in the late 1930's some children over 12 were not able to attend the Senior School in Kendal "on account of the difficulties of transporting them." The number of children on the role was usually between 3 and 30; in the mid 1930's school numbers increased temporarily during the construction of the Haweswater aqueduct.
The log books report on the subjects taught and the results of inspections, and they also include special events and minor disasters and paint an interesting picture of school life. A small selection ...

Olwen Harris published a book in 1969 called "The School in the Fells" about her short time as the teacher (Miss Johnson) at this school in the early 1940s.

	When the church was rebuilt in 1863, a village school was built, by grant and subscription, next to it, in the centre of the valley. Previously, children would have been taught in the chapel. The school closed on October 31st 1946 with only 7 on the register. The building is now the Community Hall.
Schooldays Remembered: by Nancy My family moved to Murthwaite in Longsleddale in 1939 when I was 3 years old. My father, George Edward Dawson, had been born in the valley, at Docker Nook, in 1892. He started school in March 1897, and can be found in the register page below. Then he left the valley to farm elsewhere, and he served in the first World War. During the second World War we had evacuee families living with us at Murthwaite and nearby, and I am still in contact with them. My earliest memories are of playing with other children in the fields, and our favourite place was the island in the river. From the age of five, I walked or cycled the 2 miles to the village school. There were 2 entrances with small cloakrooms, the present front door for boys, the back one - now the kitchen - for girls. The toilets in the separate block were buckets! As many as 17 pupils were taught in the single room, by one teacher, the infants starting in the north-west corner around a big stove, moving to the other end of the room as they grew older. Mrs Worden was the excellent teacher for most of my time there. We did not have a sports area but did Music and Movement to the radio. Electricity did not arrive here until Christmas 1959 so the radio ran on batteries, which faded towards the end of the week. The farmers wives took their batteries into Kendal on Saturdays to be charged at Gilbert Parkinson's Cycle Shop at the bottom of Kent Street, whilst they sold their eggs and butter in the Market Hall. But the old glass/acid ones had to kept hidden on Sammy Mitchell's weekly bus as he did not like carrying them! I left the school just before it closed in 1946, when I passed the scholarship examination to the Girls High School on Thorny Hills in Kendal. I was married in the valley and brought up 2 children at Murthwaite, where my son, his wife and 2 of my grandchildren now live. My husband and I live next door.

Miscellany 6 - Longsleddale School