This page is one of several pages which are based on articles in our book entitled Royal Leamington Spa, A History in 100 Buildings which was published in 2018 and is no longer in print.
In early Victorian England very few children from ordinary families attended school. For lots of parents, with many mouths to feed, it was not a priority. In village communities such as Lillington, where the majority of the men were employed as agricultural labourers, many parents themselves could not read or write.
A Gloucester philanthropist, Robert Raikes, set up the Sunday school system which eventually enabled a quarter of Victorian children to learn to read and write using the Bible. By the middle of the century the Lillington vicar, the Rev. John Wise, thought the time had come to have a day school in order to extend the learning of the children.
The first school building was at right angles to a terrace of cottages facing storeys, the school room being on the ground floor and the school mistress’ ‘house’ on the upper floor, with an external staircase at the north end of the building.
The school room and the mistress had to accommodate the whole infant and junior age range in that one room. It soon became overcrowded and by 1864, Rev. Wise commissioned William Ballard, a local builder to extend the building with the intention of using the new room as a school room during the day and at other times “as a reading room for the labouring men of the village”. (Leamington Courier, 11th June 1864) It later became the first Lillington Library. The land was the gift of Henry Wise of Woodcote, a major land owner in the area. The building cost £200, – around £23,500 today, – and was linked to the original building by a cloakroom. The school became popular. Classes could number up to 60 pupils of different ages and widely differing abilities, instructed by monitors (older children) and pupil teachers (teenaged teaching apprentices) working under the direction of the mistress. Until 1890/91, when education for all became free, families were charged ‘School Pence’, two pence per week (about £2.50 now) for the oldest child and one penny for each for younger siblings. Perhaps as a means of enforcing collection, a percentage of the School Pence was part of the Mistress’s or Master’s salary, which was payable quarterly, in arrears. Occasionally, children were sent home for persistent non-payment, but this was rare. The school log book records the lengths the mistresses went to, to ensure regular attendance and continuation of learning.
By the time of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1897, the school was again overcrowded, and Lady Waller kindly gave the adjoining piece of land for a further classroom and playground on the understanding that the school followed the teaching of the Established Church. As the school was thenceforth a designated Church of England School, there were inspections twice yearly, – by Diocesan Inspectors in Spring, and by Her Majesty’s Inspectors each Autumn, and the reports were usually very good. (Quote from Log Book) Miss Lucie Lock was the first Mistress, followed by Miss Catherine Cutter in 1884 who remained at the helm for forty years.
During the First World War, the children were encouraged to collect eggs to take to the wounded men being cared for at The Warren, a VAD Hospital set up in the large house that once stood at the junction of Cubbington Road and Lillington Road. They also knitted mufflers, mittens and balaclavas, – when they probably had nothing of the sort for themselves at home.
In World War Two, an underground air raid shelter was built in the girls’ playground behind the Jubilee Rooms. Sadly, it was not watertight, and unusable except in the driest weather. Fortunate, then, that there were no air raids in poor weather! All traces were later removed, but there are a number of Lillingtonians who remember it well.
Post-war, as Lillington and the council housing estate developed, the school again became overcrowded. Older children went to lessons in hired rooms at The Free Church Hall, and in the Old Library. In the 1950s, a new junior school and a separate infant school were built on the fields behind, and later, a nursery school with an entrance off Grange Road. The junior school became for a time the biggest school in central Warwickshire, with a number of high-flying alumni including Emma Bell, opera star, Edward Dusinberre, who as a teenager led the National Youth Orchestra and now leads the Takas Quartet, Lawrence Boyle, who played Rugby for England, Diplomat Matthew Pettigrew and numerous other top-class professionals in all walks of life. With a drop in the birth rate in the 1980s, and fewer children, the two schools were amalgamated, and the infant school lost its Church School status. It now also includes the nearby Nursery School, and is fast regaining popularity. The school was converted to dwellings and named Old School Mews.
Margaret Rushton, 2018