Closure of the Church School

Introduction

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The background

When the Deopham school was opened in 1851, it was seen as being part of the church’s strategy to take on the chapel community which was far more numerous in the village. The report of the opening ceremony for the school declared in no uncertain terms that “The village of Deopham, Norfolk, has long been known in its neighborhood for its entire abandonment to Dissent of the lowest and most profligate kind.” By “dissent” they would have been referring to the Primitive Methodists who had two chapels in the village. During the time that Treglown was in post, the Primitive Methodists were being referred to by him as “the enemy” .

The Rev. John Samuel Treglown was appointed as Vicar to the village in 1895, this being his first appointment following completion of his curacy in Herne Bay. As well as coming to terms with being in an unfamiliar county and the switch from town to village parishes, this was also a time of great change for the role of the Church of England in society:-

Charities Commission legislation had taken power away from the clergy; in Deopham the Rix charity coal distributions moved from being the province of the vicar to that of the Parish Council.
The Primitive Methodists, as mentioned above, were greater in number in Deopham than the adherents to the Church of England faith;
The inequality of paying tithes to the Church of England by those who did not hold to their beliefs was a continual source of stress, not resolved until the Tithe Act of 1936;
Deopham had a newly formed Parish Council following the Local Government Act of 1894 with an assertive chairman, Mr J. W. Hart. Treglown attempted to restrict the council’s activity by refusing to let them use the Church School for meetings;
The Parish Council was giving the opportunity for non-landowners to have a say in the running and setting of rates in the village. Mr J.W. Hart wrote to the local newspaper at the end of 1895 to complain that the Rev. Treglown had used the pulpit on a Sunday for “anathematising [i.e. criticising] the poor man”;
Education acts were nibbling away at the right of church schools to teach the children to become loyal Anglicans. The 1870 Act gave rights to the Dissenters (Methodists in Deopham) by including the Conscience Clause¹ and the 1902 Act further broke the church’s earlier monopoly on education.

It seems that in this environment the Rev. J.S. Treglown was fighting a rearguard action against several unstoppable tides.

Within a few months of his appointment, Treglown had a confrontation in letters published in the local press with Mr J. W. Hart, who became chairman of the Parish Council. In his extraordinary letter of November 22^nd 1895, Treglown complained that his church was picking up the lion’s share of the school costs, yet the chapel folk had a disproportionate representation amongst the school managers. “The school is mine” Treglown wrote. He then proceeded to sack Hart as a school manager, saying that the school would now be “run entirely by church people” and will be organised “as a church school only”. Treglown states that the teaching of the Catechism will be reinstated, although chapel children are at liberty to arrive at 9:30² once this is finished. (The Catechism is a question and answer ritual covering all aspects of Church of England faith, learned by heart in preparation for confirmation by the Bishop – this was clearly a deliberate provocation of the chapel folk.)

There was also a discussion about whether the school should become a board school: Treglown was clearly totally against this, as his letter of November 22^nd made very clear. The Parish Meeting of November 28^th was given an address by Mr. Newton of Wymondham explaining the advantages of having a School Board.

A further letter to the press from Mr. Hart dated February 23^rd 1897 confirmed that the vicar had sacked the Methodist school managers and replaced them with “representatives of the church party”. It also confirmed that the vicar had carried out his threat to teach the Catechism from 9:00 to 9:30 every morning. Mr. Hart “greatly objected to the teaching of this Catechism, holding that it puts in children’s minds some statements that are not true, and that it is the duty of every conscientious person to eschew such matter for his children as being calculated to warp the minds of the growing generation into unhealthy and sectarian groves, and to their exceeding spiritual disadvantage in after years”.

Offices

In case you didn’t know, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “offices” was a euphemism for toilets.

The subject of the offices first arises in Deopham in a letter from Treglown to the Board of Education in February 1897. He complains that they have just completed the provision of additional classroom accommodation for infants and new cloak rooms – and that they “have been to infinite trouble to to get the money for this and we must now stop as we are come to the end of our resources”. He continues that “most of the money we have collected has come from without the parish – there is no one here above a farmer, & not three people who could give 20/- each”.

Internal Board memoranda in 1897 appear to agree that they have sprung this on Treglown and agree not to press the subject of new offices.

In August 1905 Norfolk Education Committee wrote to Rev. Treglown insisting that the latrines, including the urinal, must be moved further from the school. Their concerns seem to have been threefold –
(1) the proximity to the school,
(2) the fact that there were two toilets per section without any division between them, and
(3) the fact that the eastern school windows could not be opened on account of the smell.
The proximity of the toilets to the school rooms can be seen in the school plan.

In December 1905, the Ministry of Health complained that “two offices are too close to the school and cannot be made absolutely satisfactory”. The Board indicated that they would be happy if the offices were “converted into earth closets and the urinal removed further from the school buildings”.

In January 1906 internal memoranda show that they consider a compromise will have to be reached since “the managers seem to be in difficulty as to the necessary funds”. It was agreed not to communicate this view.

During 1907 there was an outbreak of measles at the school. This led to arguments as to who should disinfect the school, and who should pay for it being disinfected. In the end this was resolved – the school was disinfected by the county who also paid for the operation. It was observed though that the children’s homes had not been disinfected.

The crunch finally came on December 23^rd 1907 when Mr W.D. Bushell on behalf of the L.E.A. suddenly demanded that works on the offices be carried out by March 31^st 1908 otherwise they would withdraw support for the school.

In February 1908, the school inspector reported that the premises were so depressing that “effective teaching is extremely difficult”. Initially he wrote “impossible”, but revised his comment!

End of the Road

Rev. Treglown responded in a very terse letter on March 16^th 1908 saying that the school managers would “discontinue” the school on March 31^st 1908. The Board debated whether this letter could be accepted since Treglown had failed to sign it. In the event, they decided that since his name was on it, that would suffice. There was no suggestion in Treglown’s letter the Deopham managers might think again if the Education Committee were to be more flexible in their requirements, or to help with funding. Both parties appear to have reached the end of the road. Treglown leaves no room to discuss the matter further, which makes it look as if he was glad to be shot of involvement with the school and the education authorities. The Deopham school managers involved in this decision were:

Rev. J.S. Treglown
W.C. Allen
W.C. Phoenix
R. Hurrell
W.L. Peacock
E.A. Clarke

The Board of Education in Whitehall, London was critical of the Norfolk Local Education Authority for closing the school “without sufficient caution as to the provision of alternative accommodation after the cessation of maintenance”. Another internal memorandum says that “this and other cases may teach this L.E.A. not to withdraw maintenance without having other provision ready”.

In September 1908 the Board of Education consented that, in the absence of a school in Deopham, they would agree to the pupils being conveyed to neighbouring local schools “but only as a temporary resource pending the establishment of a Public Elementary School at Deopham”. They suggested that since Morley and Wicklewood schools only had a few vacant places, “some of the children might be driven to Great Ellingham School, where there appear to be a considerable number of spare places”.

Three options were proposed by the Norfolk Education Committee in May 1908:-

Build a new school. This would cost £700-£800, split equally between county and parish.
Acquire the old school, repair the premises (it had by then been allowed to fall into disrepair, in addition to the loo problems) and reopen it as a non-church school. The repairs would cost £200, again split equally between parish and county. The Education Committee questioned whether it was worth spending money on the existing building, stating that they would want to see an architect’s report.
Leave Deopham permanently without a school and enlarge Morley & Wicklewood schools. Since Morley was a church school, the Committee was concerned that “the cost of any enlargement which might be made would fall on the religious denomination to which the School belongs”.

Breaking the Mould

The 1902 Education Act made provision for the replacement of local school boards by direct accountability to the L.E.A. and also for the provision of state grants for the maintenance of church schools. The Church of England resisted these changes, as can be seen so very clearly in Deopham, because the conditions of accepting financial support from the state were:-

the supported school being open to all pupils without denominational discrimination;
the teaching of a “catechism or formulary distinctive of any particular denomination” was explicitly prohibited;
“assistant teachers and pupil teachers may be appointed, if it is thought fit, without reference to religious creed and denomination, and, in any case in which there are more candidates for the post of pupil teacher than there are places to be filled, the appointment shall be made by the local education authority, and they shall determine the respective qualifications of the candidates by examination or otherwise”.

The Rev. Treglown clearly did not wish to compromise his high church principals by having anyone outside the Church having anything to do with the management of the school. In this respect, he followed in the footsteps of the Rev. G. Turner who signed the founding documents.

The Board of Education in November 1909 asked Treglown “in what manner it was proposed by the Trustees to satisfy the trust of the Deed dated 21st June 1851, which requires the conduct of a Day School on the premises”. Treglown replied that the school would be used for Church of England teaching. The buildings will, he said, be used for:-

Sunday Schools,
Classes,
Lectures,
Addresses,
Services,
Other educating, elevating and entertaining agencies in connection with the Parish Church.

The Board of Education pressed their point again in February 1909, and in response, Treglown defended his action in refusing an arrangement with the Local Education Authority by saying that the deeds stated that the building was not only to be used as a Day School, but specifically it was to be used for teaching “in connection with the Church of England”.
The Board of Education tried again to persuade him to be more accomodating, with a follow-up when he failed to respond. A final attempt was made by the Board in September

Formal notice of the intention to build the iron school was issued on Sept 10^th 1908, with its opening taking place on May 10^th 1909.

An anomaly

If the Board of Education did not have the power to force the trustees of the church school building to allow their continued use, why did Messrs Gray, Phoenix and Allen have to pay the Minister of Education £125 in 1955 to release the school from his domain? It would seem anomalous for the Minister of Education to have gained additional powers over the building after it had ceased to accomodate a school.

Conclusion

The Rev. Treglown, Mr. J.S. Hart and Mr. W.D. Bushell all had their say and in a sense had their own way. Treglown could have faced up to the reality that national legislation required the church to release its former stranglehold on education and allowed greater L.E.A. participation; Bushell could have been less confrontational until he was sure of an alternative arrangement for the school. In the end though it was the children that lost out, being without any schooling arrangements at all for six months, being conveyed to schools outside the village for another eight months and then having to suffer the discomfort of the tin school for a further fifteen years.

Bibliography

Gillard D (2018), Education in the UK: a history www.education-uk.org/history
Montague Barlow & H. Macan, The Education Act 1902 with Notes, 2^nd Revised Edition 1903

Footnotes

The Conscience Clause of the 1870 Education Act legislated that:
admission to the school must not be conditional on a child’s attendance, or non-attendance, at any “Sunday school or any place of religious worship” outside the school, or at any “religious observance or instruction in religious subjects” inside the school or elsewhere, from which he may be withdrawn by his parent; or if withdrawn by his parent from such religious instruction, the child must not be compelled to come to school on any day exclusively set apart (as in the case of Saturday by the Jews) for religious observance by the religious body to which the parent belongs. ↩︎
The 1870 Elementary Education Act had in any case stipulated, as part of its Conscience Clause, that “Religious instruction, if given at all, must be given at the beginning or end of school hours, and a time table showing the times when it is given must be hung up in every school“. ↩︎

Date	Change
2/5/24	Comments on 1870 & 1902 Acts
23/11/22	Published