The New School

 

The new school was built in 1863 by Richard Fellowes Benyon on part of Loring's Meadow and remained in the ownership of his successors James Herbert and Henry Benyon. The stone used is the same as the Lodges on the Pangbourne Road, built the previous year, and the Rectory, built in 1870. The architect for the Rectory was said by Betjeman and Piper to have been P C Hardwick, also said by them to have been responsible for the new church, so he may have designed the school as well. If so Englefield is in good company for he was also responsible for Charterhouse School. On the other hand, St Peter's church at Ufton Nervet is in the same stone and that was built by Richard Armstrong in the same year as the Lodges.

 

The school as it was in 1959 is shown on the left. The original building was modified several times before it assumed this form, the first time as early as 1870 when a separate classroom for the infants was added. They previously had been taught in a gallery in the main classroom, to the general disturbance of the other classes. The gallery was not removed, though, until 1908. Further work took place in 1882 when the infants' classroom was enlarged. By 1888 the building had reached the state shown with three rooms. The two gabled elevations facing the camera in this picture were the main schoolroom on the left and the "bay" on the right, these being in fact one large space with the bay slightly shorter in consequence of having a passageway/cloakroom across the back of it, and the infants' classroom behind the main schoolroom. In the same year, the Soup Kitchen was opened to supply children with halfpenny dinners but this burnt down in 1901.

 

The passageway at the back gave access to the bay, the schoolroom and the infants' classroom, and was the girls' entrance. In 1890 this space was enlarged to provide more room for hats and coats and a galvanised iron roof was added outside, over the space between the infants' classroom and the headmaster's house, to give extra protection in wet weather. The galvanised iron was later replaced by glass. The porch at the front in the picture was added in 1892 as a new entrance for the boys.

 

In 1912 a half glazed screen was put between the main room and the bay and certainly by the 1950s the older pupils were taught in the bay, with the larger room becoming a general space for assemblies, PT, etc.

 

The area in front of the porch was the boys' playground. The girls' playground was at the back of the building and was nearly twice as big as the boys' area, though it did have to accommodate the infants as well. In the foreground is the school garden where the older boys would learn gardening and to the right of that out of the picture is the remnant of Loring's Meadow. To the left of the school building is the swing boat frame, the boats themselves being long gone.

 

The school was originally lit by oil lamps but these were replaced by gas in January 1888 and that by electricity in May 1936. Heating was by coke fired stove until the 1960s and it was the job of senior boys to make sure they were regularly stoked. By this means the area close to the stove was warm enough during the winter but the further reaches of the room were still bitterly cold. In the early days there were many reports of children burning their hands on the stoves, which later had wire guards put round them.

 

Until 1963 bucket closets were still in use, housed in brick buildings, one for the girls at the bottom of their playground and one for the boys some 25 yards to the right of the picture, along the footpath leading to the Rectory. In 1963 modern flush lavatories were installed in a new building within  the open annex to the right of the porch.

 

In the later part of the 1950s Henry Benyon considered gifting the school to the education authorities but this was a time when the number on the roll was falling and there was concern that the school might become unviable. In those circumstances, if it were under the ownership of the education authorities they would be able to do what they liked with it and sell it to anyone for any purpose. It was obviously not desirable to have the building used for what might be a totally unsuitable purpose right in the heart of the village so instead of giving the building it was proposed to lease it on a short, but renewable, lease. However there remained other problems concerning the right of way across the playground for fuel deliveries to the Club and for the Club caretaker, whose car was garaged roughly where the modern school buildings now are. There were also problems with adequacy of water supply and sewerage and the issue was still unresolved when Henry Benyon died in 1959.