Learning from the Past

‘Stand up straight with your fingers pointed down to God’s good Earth,’ says Miss Squire firmly. The line of six year olds march into the tiny schoolroom. The little blond boy at the front appears to shrink as Miss Squire briskly inspects each child’s hands as they enter the building.  ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness,’ she continues. ‘And remember, children should be seen and not heard.’ Miss Squire is stern but not unfriendly; she does not smile and her whole demeanour clearly demonstrates that this is her domain where children do as they are told. This is reflected in the regimented rows of benches on the chipped rough parquet floor with a teacher’s desk raised next to a fireplace at the front of the room.
‘Miss Elisabeth Squire’ and her sister, ‘Miss Rebecca Squire’ are part of a team of 10  teachers and volunteers at the Victorian School in Sevington, a small village very close to junction 17 of the M4 in Wiltshire.  Recreating the past to offer children a taste of living history has been increasingly popular in recent years but in Sevington it has not been recreated, but rediscovered.  Believed to be unique in the UK, the village school and its contents survived untouched for nearly a century.
The school was built in 1849 by local landowner Joseph Neeld to educate the children of his workers.  About 8 years later, 15 year old Miss Elisabeth Squire arrived from Yeovil to become its schoolmistress.   In 1913, after more than 50 years, she locked the door of the one-room school and retired to the adjoining house.  It remained closed with its stove, oil-lamps, desks, slates, books and even a couple of straw bonnets undisturbed until 1986.
 Once rediscovered and its contents catalogued, local enthusiasts established a charitable trust and the school’s door opened to educational groups in 1991.  A new Miss Elisabeth Squire was employed to add authenticity assisted by her sister, Rebecca.  
The children sit quietly in rows on the long benches in the schoolroom studying their surroundings carefully.  The walls are bare but there is a bunch of flowers and an oil lamp on the mantelpiece with a picture of a portly Queen Victoria above it.  A large blackboard sits on an easel with an 1898 date carefully written in copperplate.  Miss Squire reminds the children of the celebrations they would have enjoyed for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee last year.  The boys and girls sit separately and appear nervous until they are introduced to slates for handwriting practice.  There is a murmur of appreciation and they approach the task with care, deliberating over the repetitive writing strokes meticulously.  Everybody is appropriately dressed and despite their young age, the children take their roles seriously
In the adjoining schoolhouse Miss Rebecca Squire, in her dour Victorian dress, is overseeing some domestic chores.
‘The children are separated into different groups and while some pupils are being taught the ‘three R’s’ with Elisabeth Squire in the schoolroom, I bring a number in here to look at how different home life was for Victorian children,’ she explains. The parlour is small and richly decorated in red, offering a cosy contrast to the harshness of the schoolroom.  A door opens directly into the little kitchen where there is a warmth from the range set into the fireplace with a clothes airer hanging above. The girls are shown the use of the range and how hot irons as well as water and food can be heated on it.  They use soft or hard brushes for sweeping and beat the dust from a doormat. One girl’s long pigtails swing violently as she is encouraged to ‘use plenty of elbow grease’ when polishing a candle holder. Another sits demurely sewing a lavender bag which she will keep as a souvenir.   The boys appear bemused to be offered more masculine tasks in simply carpentry.  Weather permitting, they also dig the vegetable garden. 
The kitchen garden was restored by students from Bristol University to an authentic design and it still has the original earth closet and wash-house.  In spring and summer, children learn the medicinal and culinary uses of various herbs from the garden and hedgerows.  Miss Squire explains to the children how they would be expected to enter the world of work at the age of 11 or 12 in Victorian times.  In rural areas like Sevington, that would have meant going into service for the girls and farm labouring for the boys.
Hence, rather than just a glimpse of a Victorian village school, the children have a taste of village life as a whole. Years 1 - 6 are encouraged to visit with appropriate teaching materials sent in advance.  Today, pupils from Air Balloon Hill School in Bristol are here working on Victorian childhood in preparation for Key Stage 1. 
‘The children absolutely love it,’ says their teacher Kate Hampton. ‘They can see and touch what it was really like for children. We can show them videos, use Victorian names and put them in rows at school, but we could never re-create the feel and smell of this place.  For the children to have a Victorian schoolmistress teach handwriting as it was taught then is brilliant for them.’ 
‘Before coming, we talk about what will happen here, what will be different; we choose and practise the Victorian names.  Even so, when we arrive and they see Miss Squire on the step, they are quite nervous.  But it’s great to stand back and watch.  We see how they change completely.’  This is Kate’s second visit and she has every intention to return.
Sevington is an inspirational story about how a little forgotten part of 19th century childhood has been preserved for the pleasure and education of children today.  Until 2012, the school building is rented on a fixed lease from Joseph Neeld’s descendents.  By then the trustees hope to have found a way to fund its freehold purchase to preserve this precious time-capsule for future generations.  Miss Squire would probably say, ‘Where there is a will, there will be a way.’  Let’s hope so.

© Judith Cameron