Leigh School/s – the early days
The following is based on two parish magazine articles published in September and October 2025.
Leigh School/s – the early days (part 1)
The start of a new school year is a time to think about schooling in Leigh 200 years ago, when on Leigh Green there stood a charity school, but not in the same location as today’s school. The first mention of this school was for 1826. The mention referred to, however, only comes from a meeting of the School Managers in 1936, when correspondence refers to a plan showing the position of the old boys’ school in the middle of the Green, which, according to this meeting, was built when the original school building, built about 1826, was found to be too small. The plan referred to would be the 1841 Tithe Map. The location is marked as south of the Forge and south of what used to be one of the many ‘footpaths’ dividing the Green.
What must be borne in mind is that during most of the 19th century, the Green and area around it is not what we see today – a mown area of grass, surrounded by tarmacked roads, with lots of cottages, houses, trees and benches. In 1841, the Green covered a larger area and was criss-crossed with well-trodden footpaths and well-used farm tracks. No made-up road ran round it and it would have been a scythed area around the cut square for cricket – played in Leigh since 1700. There were also several ponds as there was not the drainage we have today. As well as cricket, the Green would have been used for fairs and other amusements and it was only levelled and planted with horse chestnut trees after 1870, at Samuel Morley’s expense, making it an area for leisure sports before eventually falling under the care of the Parish Council.
Going back to 1841, the main road through the village came from Hildenborough. This road was maintained by the village and paid for by the local ratepayers. There were no pavements. The Green itself extended from Orchard House to the slaughter house (where the parking area is today opposite the Crandalls), across to Greenways Cottages, then across Powder Mill Lane (just a farm track), to where the earlier moated vicarage was. South of the Green was Old Wood Cottage, Old Chimneys, Oak Cottage, Elizabeth Cottage and a pair of cottages – probably Cherry Tree cottages, all ‘ on the Green’ with no road in front. North of the Green, from Church Hill, was the White House, a shop where Church Hill House is today, opposite a couple of cottages, coming down to Great Brooks (a shop and house), the Forge, the three Forge Row cottages facing the Green (where Forge Square is today) and the vestry cottages in the ‘South View’ garden going out of the village. From the Forge itself, you would look across the Green, with no trees barring the view (except the old oak by Oak Cottage) and see the charity school, not incongruous with its surroundings, and the cottages opposite and the farmland stretching into the distance.
Along with the 1841 Tithe Map, there was the Tithe Commutation Schedule, which lists the charity school as ‘no. 49 charity school’, occupier James Pankhurst and others, being owned by the Parish of Leigh. However, the reference to James Pankhurst and others is misleading and refers not only to the charity school but to other parish cottages near the Green, down Lower Street, and the Poor House, all owned by the Parish of Leigh. (Mr Pankhurst would have occupied one of the parish cottages).
The Tithe Map and Schedule do not state that the charity school is a ‘boys’ school despite what was said in the correspondence mentioned above, nor does the Tithe Map mention that the National School in Powder Mill Lane (built in 1831 on land given by the Rev. May) is a ‘girls’ school. We can only surmise this was the case after the new school on the current site was built in about 1870. We then get the first clear mention of the two separate schools, one for ‘boys’ (the new building) and one for ‘girls’, the National School in Powder Mill Lane. This is shown on both the Ordnance Survey Map published in 1871 and the subsequent Drainage Map of 1872, based on this OS map. What we do know is that both these Leigh Schools were initially National Schools and continued to be part of that movement until 1936. National Schools were promoted and supported financially by the National Society (for the Promotion of the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Church of England) which had been formed in 1811 by the Church of England to establish its own National Schools Movement. The rules of the National Society dictated that boys and girls were to be educated separately. Hence, the two schools we find in 19th century Leigh.
These is further evidence of more than one school in the village back in 1847, from the Bagshaws 1847 directory which states that “National Schools for boys and girls have been established in the village”, although some later Directories just refer to the National School (singular).
Joyce Field
Leigh School/s – the early days (part 2)
By the late 1860s, it was clear that a wholly voluntary system of schooling could not continue without some State assistance. On 17 February 1870, W E Forster introduced his Education Act. However, the government needed to satisfy the conflicting interests of those who supported ‘unsectarian’ education and those who supported the ‘religious principle’. In the end there was compromise, with the aim to provide a sufficient number of schools managed by approximately 2,500 School Boards, open to state inspection, and allowing unsectarian religious education, with agreement that the religious convictions of parents and children should be scrupulously regarded in the instruction given during regular school hours. The Act also permitted the voluntary schools to continue outside of these so-called Board Schools. The Board Schools would be fully funded by the local education authority as opposed to those which remained voluntary, which would be part funded by the state, part by voluntary subscriptions and part from one of the two Societies – the National Society (established by the Church of England in 1811) or the Society for Promoting the Lancasterian System for the Education of the Poor. Leigh School would fall into this category of voluntary school.
Two other things happened in Leigh at this time.
First, a new Leigh School was built to replace the former charity school on the Green. Built in 1870, it was done so on land gifted by Thomas Farmer Baily, then owner of Hall Place, to the Reverend May and was built as the ‘boys’ school in Leigh, as indicated on the Ordnance Survey map. The girls would continue to attend the school in Powder Mill Lane separately for some time. Both these schools would remain National Schools.
Second, the arrival of Samuel Morley at Hall Place: as a non-conformist, he believed in the education of poorer children and was MP for Bristol when the subject of universal education was being debated. He had fought in parliament for the interests of those not of the established church to be respected in the school environment and had been against the idea of the Church of England being involved in education. He wished the unsectarian principle to be followed. Yet, it was generally believed that public funds were indispensable for education and that the voluntary principle could not be sustained: England had remained behind other countries in the question of educating the poor. In the end, Samuel Morley had to compromise his principles for the sake of education for ‘all’, realizing that the voluntary system of the two Societies named above could not deal with the needs of the nation and that action was needed “in order to secure the result, that every child in the kingdom should receive a good education . . . It will be my object to secure, or help to secure, a measure which, giving to the people the best popular secular education, shall yet leave reasonable freedom for religious teaching”.
The new School Boards were able to raise money through local rates which could be used to develop their schools and they could apply for capital funding in the form of a government loan and build their own Board Schools. They provided teachers and insisted upon attendance of all children who were not being educated in any other way. The School Boards could also make grants to existing voluntary/Church schools. The non-denominational principle kept ministers of religion out but left schoolmasters to interpret the Bible in any way they pleased as long as their interpretation was not that of any existing church formulary. Parents had the right to withdraw children from any religious instruction provided in Board Schools and withdraw to attend any other religious instruction. Education provided was still not free but those parents who could not afford payment were excused fees. For the first time, the 1870 Act secured local expenditure on elementary education and there were also tentative moves to opening up secondary education to the poor as well.
Between 1870 and 1885, the new Board Schools, with more resources than the voluntary schools, started or took over 3,000 – 4,000 schools and the number of children at elementary school trebled. Further Education Acts followed, the leaving age was gradually raised to 12 by 1899, when a new government department to oversee education was created. In the 1902 Balfour Education Act, the 2,500 plus School Boards that had been set up in 1870 were abolished and replaced with about 330 Local Education Authorities (LEA). By this time, there were 5,700 Board Schools with 2.6 million pupils and 14,000 voluntary schools with 3 million pupils. The LEAs remit also included secondary education for the first time. In Kent, the Kent Education Committee (KEC) was established. These LEAs also had authority over the secular curriculum of the voluntary (National Society/Lancasterian) schools. Although part-funded by the Government, the continuing voluntary schools, such as Leigh, that wished to include denominational religious instruction, still had to pay for their own buildings although grants were provided for school maintenance.
Therefore, Leigh School remained a Church of England voluntary school for the time being and Samuel Morley and his descendants at Hall Place, would take a keen, if somewhat paternalistic, interest in the school and were involved with its management. The two Leigh schools, ‘boys’ and ‘girls’, would merge, possibly following the 1880 Elementary Education Act, but we do know that by the time of the 1895/98 Ordnance Survey map, there is only one building in Leigh which is called the ‘School’ and the building in Powder Mill Lane is not given any ‘title’ against it: at the time of the School Managers’ meeting of 1905, reference is made to the ‘mixed school teachers’ and ‘infant school teacher’, all as being on the new school site. In Kellys Directory of 1913, the Leigh school is no longer referred to as the National School but as the Public Elementary School although it was still a Church of England voluntary school.
The cost of maintaining a voluntary school, like Leigh, led in time, to many being absorbed into the State system, either as fully state-run schools or as faith schools funded by the state. Leigh School struggled on until 1936 when the precariousness of its financial situation forced the School Managers to place it fully into the hands of the then Kent Education Authority.
Joyce Field