EDUCATION.
One villager in 1564 left £100
owed him by the lord, partly to set his children
to school. (fn. 78) There was no school in the parish c.
1800, (fn. 79) and an attempt by the acting curate in
1817 to start a Sunday school, supported by subscription, failed: parents allegedly objected to
school discipline. (fn. 80) Another church Sunday
school, started in 1826, had 40 pupils by 1833,
as did an infant school opened in 1828. By 1833
three other schools recently started, apparently
dame schools, for which parents paid, took
77 more children. At her death in 1832 Mrs.
Rayner left £600 to trustees to found and
maintain, in a newly built schoolhouse, day and
Sunday schools for the children of Wicken's
poor. She required of them both Bible reading
and regular church-going. The minister and
churchwardens were to manage the school. The
day school had 70 pupils by 1833. (fn. 81)
Miss Hatch, the foundress's sister, who effectively controlled that school until her death in
1858, enlarged it westward by 1835 to provide
for a Sunday school. That school, occupying a
site along the north side of North Street, (fn. 82) was
a long, narrow, one-storeyed building, only 16½
ft. wide, which housed the teachers between two
schoolrooms, one larger, one smaller. (fn. 83) Miss
Hatch enlarged its site in 1855 in trust for a
church school. (fn. 84) In her will of 1858 she added
another £1,000 to her sister's endowment, then
yielding c. £19 yearly. Although the later
bequest apparently failed under the mortmain
law, her trustees paid c. £40, as 4 per cent interest, to the school until c. 1870, when those benefactions provided almost two thirds of the
school's £90 income. (fn. 85)
Married couples usually taught at the school
from the 1840s to the 1860s, seldom staying
long. Also supported by schoolpence, those teachers had 65-80 pupils c. 1845-50, while 90, out
of 100-120 enrolled, attended in 1866. Local
women were recruited to teach the infants, and,
sometimes, sewing. (fn. 86) At a night school started
by 1860, the newly obtained certificated master
taught some 50 youths to read and write, besides
geography, in 1866. (fn. 87) On Government insistence
the school was reconstructed, the cost being subscribed locally, in 1867-8 to take 155 children,
providing a two-storeyed teacher's house at one
end and a larger infants' schoolroom. (fn. 88) Out of
104 pupils in 1868, 45-60 passed in reading and
writing, only a third in arithmetic. (fn. 89)
The vicar still maintained the school as a
church one in 1873, but, since the endowments
then only produced £50 of the £130 cost, he was
obliged in 1876, as teachers' pay rose, to accept
a school board, to which he leased the school
buildings. In 1897 the vicar still taught there
regularly, (fn. 90) being paid £10-12 yearly out of
the Rayner bequest from c. 1878 for giving
religious instruction. (fn. 91) That charity was wound
up in 1994, the capital being assigned for church
repairs. (fn. 92)
Attendance under the mistresses in charge
ranged from the late 1870s between 80 and 100. (fn. 93)
The county council, which took the school over
from 1903, built a new school in 1908 slightly
further west along North Street. (fn. 94) The old
school was sold in 1910. A Scheme made that
year established the Rayner and Hatch Educational Foundation, which combined the sale proceeds, £50, with Mrs. Rayner's £650 of stock,
in practice still yielding only c. £10 a year, and
assigned half the total income to the vicar for
the church Sunday school. The other half was
to provide secondary education scholarships for
former Wicken and Upware school-pupils. (fn. 95) In
the late 20th century the old schoolroom, still
standing in 1995, housed school carpentry and
cookery classes and later the village youth club. (fn. 96)
At the new school, under a headmaster serving
1906-46 who revived the night school and
taught gardening, (fn. 97) attendance was c. 90-100
into the early 1930s, but only 77 in 1938. (fn. 98) From
1958 the older children were sent to Soham village college. (fn. 99) Though Wicken school was
enlarged in 1974, (fn. 1) it was threatened with closure
in 1987-8, when there were only 53 pupils,
arousing local opposition. (fn. 2) Having lost eight
head teachers successively since 1976, (fn. 3) the
school was finally closed in 1992, when barely
35 pupils attended. They were sent to the church
school in Soham, (fn. 4) and the building was sold for
conversion to a house.
In 1879 the new Swaffham Prior school board
opened a school, initially with only 12 pupils,
under a Wicken woman in a newbuilt schoolroom at Upware, which also took children from
cottages in Swaffham Prior's fen. (fn. 5) That school,
from 1958 only a junior and infant school, was
originally intended to hold 86 children, but was
attended by only 47 pupils in 1910, by 22 in 1919,
and by 28 in 1938. Numbers had been reduced
to six by 1967 when it was closed. From 1970 the
building was used for a Field Studies Centre. (fn. 6)