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SCHOOLS IN OLD-TIME
HARROGATE
The "Free School" At
Bilton
When
the Reformation in religion, nearly complete by the middle of the
sixteenth century, had ended the teaching work of the monks and the
chantry priests, the State in effect re-organised education by the
foundation of "Grammar Schools." In the later century and the first
quarter of the seventeenth a renewed enthusiasm for learning led
some private persons also, particularly philanthropic merchants, to
endow new schools. All such schools that have survived may be
recognised by the fact that they call themselves the Grammar Schools
of Edward VI, Queen Elizabeth or King James.
Their founders had in mind, primarily, the education of poor boys
(the education of girls was then rather neglected, and rich boys
often had private tutors). By the eighteenth century, except perhaps
in a few favoured places like the Lake District, these schools, when
they still existed, did so chiefly to educate the children of the
rich.
In
the time of James I, a Grammar School had been founded at
Knaresborough for the benefit of the whole Parish, of which the
township of Bilton-with-Harrogate then formed a part. But in the
course of a century or so this school, like a good number of others,
became practically defunct - a fact that readily explains why
Harrogate's share in it seems to be now forgotten.
Fortunately, from the middle of the eighteenth century, when England
was already a great trading nation and on the point of becoming a
manufacturing one, a fresh interest in the education of poor
children began to show itself among the enlightened and sufficiently
well-to-do. In this district a number of schools for the poor were
founded, among them the very attractive one at Burnt Yates, in 1760.
The name Free School was often given to these, and they received
girls as well as boys.
In
1779, Richard Taylor, belonging to an old Bilton family, established
what was to be known for the next half century as either the Free
School at Bilton or, more simply, Bilton School. Some dozen years
before he died he gave in trust to "John Inman and his heirs " a
house, barn and other buildings, and about 18 acres of land. The
trust that Inman had to fulfil was to see that the rents and profits
should enable a schoolmaster to live in the house and keep a school
there. His pupils were to be poor boys and girls of
Bilton-with-Harrogate, the children of inhabitants legally settled
in that place. This arrangement was to continue, according to the
instructions, for ever. The Master, who, from about 1800 to 1824,
appears to have been John Inman himself, was allowed to take other
pupils - in addition to the poor - from whom he could demand
"Gratuities " (:fees). The Report of the Charity Commissioners of
1820 states that 30 poor children were then being taught, each at
the nominal charge of a shilling a year, and that the fee-paying
pupils had, in the few years before, varied between fifteen and
twenty. The subjects taught were reading, writing, arithmetic, the
Church .catechism and the "principles of the Christian religion."
Pupils entered at six or seven and stayed two years or more if
necessary.
According to a Harrogate Handbook of 1858, there were then only 20
free places. The -history of charities shows a regrettable tendency
for them to be reduced or to disappear altogether, but a drop in the
relative value of the endowment may be the explanation of this
particular decline. The school continued to do good work, for long
under Masters called Idell, and in 1883 it became a public
elementary school. It is now called "Bilton Endowed School."
Above the doorway of the school-house is a stone, with well-cut
lettering, which in the phrase used by old writers, bears the
following legend:
THIS SCHOOL, WAS ENDOWED,
BY
MR FRANCIS, AND MR
RICHARD TAYLOR.
TWO BROTHERS, WHO DWELT
HERE
AND BUILT IN THE YEAR
1793
There is certainly an element of legend (in its modern meaning) in
this inscription. Apart from the introduction of "Mr Francis
Taylor," Richard Taylor did not build it, much less live in it, as
he died before 1792.
In
that year, John Inman prepared to take into his own hands the whole
of the land, which, in the previous years, had been let, and to set
about building a new school and schoolhouse. A document - a legal
Case - of 1799 says that the school was built several years after
the death of Richard Taylor. This oldest known information about the
early history of the school was due, indirectly, to Inman's own
action. On the plea that he was maintaining the whole property as a
charitable institution, he refused to pay any Statutory dues, such
as the Poor Rate and the Highways Rate. As the other inhabitants
naturally objected, the Overseers obtained the opinion of a
barrister, for whom lawyer Earnshaw of Knaresborough drew up his
-Case. Counsel ruled that Inman was in the wrong and the 1802
Highways Rate Book shows him paying on a rateable value of £20. In
that year, he brought in six more Trustees - an arrangement that was
to be permanent - and the property comes to be described in Rate
Books as Bilton School, with Inman as the responsible Trustee.
The
historian Grainge increased the element of legend associated with
the school by his story of the bachelor brothers who had founded the
Bachelors Gardens School. The Bilton School property, which was all
close by, included a garden of rather over four acres that seems to
have been known as Bachelor Gardens, a name derived probably from
the local family. William Pullan, gardener, occupied it in 1824. The
actual field may be the one immediately in front of the School: this
is marked "garden" on the township map made by Charles Greeves in
the 1830's. Bachelor Gardens were well known in the early nineteenth
century, for several people are then described as living near them.
But the first known reference to a Bachelor Gardens School appears
in the 1856 Rate Book, where, rather strangely, both it and Bilton
School are entered under the same Master, Frances Idell. More
strangely still, the latter has no assessment. It seems reasonable
to infer that the mind of the Assistant Overseer was a little
confused and that the address of the school was in process of
becoming its title.
After the Harrogate Workhouse was built it is possible that children
living in it were amongst the poor pupils of the School, the boys
for a time, the girls always. The 1820 Charity Commissioners' Report
states that there was then some competition for admission, six or
seven applicants each year failing to find a place. It was the
Trustees who decided the free places, and there is one fact that
suggests they gave preference to other than Workhouse children,
perhaps to please the parents of fee-paying pupils. At least, from
1825 to 1828 an average number of eight boys in the Harrogate
Workhouse attended the National School at Knaresborough. The
township paid their fees of 1s a quarter which, in those days, meant
three calendar months exactly. Even there they were not very
welcome, for the School Master once suggested to the Workhouse
Master that, unless his boys were more ready to keep the Rules of
the School, it might be as well not to send them.
Richard Taylor's good example in founding a school was followed in
the 1830's by William Sheepshanks, who had come to Harrogate before
1824. In the following years he acquired a considerable estate. He
is remembered chiefly by his large benefactions to St. John's,
Bilton, and he presented the clock on the tower of Christ Church. He
endowed an Infants' School in Church Square, but it is probable that
there had been a Church School there before, Ai the days of St.
John's Chapel. In 1816, the Vicar of Knaresborough rented a small
house used as a school from Thomas Emmatt, the builder then busy
erecting houses at Church Square. The Christ Church National School
there was not to be built till 1879.
The
first National School at High Harrogate was begun in 1834. Its site
was bought from the Independents, this including also their old
Cross Chapel, which they had left in 1832 after completing
Providence Chapel, made out of the materials of St. John's.
Religious differences were obviously no bar to business
transactions. . . . About the same time a National School connected
with the recently-built St. Mary's Church was founded at Low
Harrogate. The Nonconformists built a British (Lancastrian) School
in what was then coming to be known as Central Harrogate, the
neighbourhood of Beulah Place. The Churches were certainly showing
energy in catering for the rapidly increasing population.
It
is quite clear, however, that these schools did not meet the whole
of the need. Records of private elementary schools are naturally
scanty, but William Marshall kept one near the Queen from 1836 at
least, and for some years before this Palliser, who in that year
started the Harrogate Advertiser, had also kept school.
Superior establishments for the education of "Gentlemen" and "Young
Ladies" had already appeared in Harrogate. As is evident from
Dickens's sharp attack on the boarding-school racket, in his novel
Nicholas Nickleby, and also from early copies of the Harrogate
Advertiser, Yorkshire as a whole was coming to abound in such
schools. Not all of these, of course, would merit the title of "Dotheboys
Hall." Grove House (the former World's End Inn) was kept as a
gentleman's seminary, at least from 1818 to 1823, by the Rev. Thomas
Wildsmith, who was minister, in turn, of two Independent Chapels in
Harrogate. At the same period, his wife conducted a ladies' seminary
at Grove Cottage. Catherine Parry had a girls' school at Strawberry
Dale Cottage in 1823, and continued there until at least 1834. In
1837, Ann Heslop had a girls' boarding school in High Harrogate, and
Elizabeth Daniel one in Central Harrogate.
There is, unfortunately, only the evidence of prospectuses for two
other boys' schools that possibly existed about this time. On April
1st, 1828 - the quarters were strictly observed - a Mr. C. Wilkinson
intended opening a school at High Harrogate, with the following
scale of fees, each quarter:-Reading 10s.; Writing 12s.; Arithmetic
15s.; Mensuration 18s.; Latin, Greek, French, &c. 21s. Mr. Wilkinson
appears to have been a man of energy: he was prepared, also, to give
private lessons from 12 to 12-30 and from 6 to 9. The other
prospectus is that of. T. Linforth, in 1830. He was ready to take
"Twelve Young Gentlemen" and instruct them in a great variety of
subjects, including all the above, for eight guineas a year, and
would board them as well for forty. In this case, a footnote
suggests some sort of entrance examination: "None will be admitted
but those who can read and write tolerably well."
This
last school was one of those intended for the select few; but there
is good evidence, which includes that of letters in the township
records, that few people in the neighbourhood in the early
nineteenth century were illiterate. Bilton School, and the Church
schools that followed it, are proofs of an active interest, locally,
in education.
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