Dry Drayton: Education

EDUCATION

Schoolmasters, initially licensed to teach grammar, after 1600 to teach reading, writing, and accounts, were frequently but transiently recorded from the late 1570s to the 1610s: one man served from 1605 to 1613. (fn. 1) A rector, Henry Haslop, who in 1728 was paying for one child to be taught, (fn. 2) by will proved probably in 1728 left £40 to erect a charity school and maintain a schoolmaster. The money was received by 1736, (fn. 3) and by 1738 a new copyhold cottage had been acquired as a schoolhouse. (fn. 4) In 1764 Elizabeth Hetherington, sister of a former rector, bequeathed £140 to augment the endowments. (fn. 5) In the early 19th century the schoolmasters received from those endowments 7 guineas, increased by the 1830s to £13, to which the rector added in the 1810s £10 more, for teaching 12 poor children free, and 18 by 1818. A third were girls, taught needlework. About 1833 there were also 12-22 fee-paying pupils; another 20 were taught at two dame schools. (fn. 6)

The endowed church day school, which by 1846 had 20 boys and 20 girls, (fn. 7) was kept from 1843 to 1872 by Francis Rogers, a locally born ex-carpenter, assisted by his wife and daughter. From 1850 they also sometimes held an evening school, which in 1873 had 40 pupils. The number of day pupils was nominally 75 in 1851, c. 58 in 1861, while average attendance c. 1872 was 40- 50. (fn. 8) In 1856 William Smith rebuilt the school in red brick with a teacher's house. (fn. 9)

After Rogers died a certificated mistress was procured in 1875, when the school was enlarged to take 81 pupils. (fn. 10) It was further enlarged in 1895 and 1911, to hold 100 children. (fn. 11) The rector still taught there weekly in the 1880s and 1890s. (fn. 12) Attendance between 1880 and 1905 mostly ranged between 45 and 55, (fn. 13) rising to 80 in the early 1910s, after the Scotland Farm cottages were built, (fn. 14) before falling to the old level, and by 1938 was 39. (fn. 15) From 1939 the older children went to Impington village college, but the school remained open as a Church primary school into the 1980s. (fn. 16)

A primary school at Bar Hill was built in 1967, initially for 200 children. When opened it had c. 30 pupils. (fn. 17) The number attending had risen to 150 by 1971 (fn. 18) and 210 by 1977. (fn. 19) Four new classrooms for up to 140 more were opened in 1983, (fn. 20) but the school was again overflowing its buildings by 1985. (fn. 21)