A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 9, Chesterton, Northstowe, and Papworth Hundreds. Originally published by Victoria County History, London, 1989.
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'Knapwell: Education', in A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 9, Chesterton, Northstowe, and Papworth Hundreds, (London, 1989) pp. 338-339. British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol9/pp338-339 [accessed 19 April 2024]
Education
A graduate kept a school in 1684. (fn. 1) Knapwell had no school thereafter until the 1820s. (fn. 2) In 1829 a church day and Sunday school was started, supported by subscriptions and school pence. The day school with c. 15 pupils, assisted c. 1837 from Squire's charity, was linked to the National Society by 1846, when it had a salaried master. (fn. 3) It probably lapsed following David Craig's madness but a labourer's wife was keeping a school in 1861, (fn. 4) while the parish clerk still taught a poorly attended Sunday school in the church. A revived Church day school was opened in 1873 in a schoolroom recently built by H. H. English at the south end of the village street (fn. 5) for 30 children, and was apparently enlarged c. 1905 for an infants' class. (fn. 6) In 1879, when three quarters of the cost were met from voluntary subscriptions, it was taught by a young uncertificated mistress. Attendance was c. 20 then and c. 30 from the 1880s (fn. 7) until 1910. Numbers fell to 20 by 1919, below 15 after the older children were sent to Elsworth in 1920, and only 7 in 1938. (fn. 8) The school was closed in 1954, the building reverting to the landowner. (fn. 9)