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Nicking off school for tatee picking
Then in 1950 - The headmaster looking at his depleted class would shake his head in silent frustration. He knew that once the harvest time had arrived or the potoatoe picking season had started, he would be lucky to have half a class of boys to teach.
It was the price he and other village teachers in the 1800’s paid for accomodating pupils from a rural farming community.
The school at Kirkby in Clevealnd (pictured above) was no exception - hay time, fruit picking and stormy or snowy weather were all additional reasons for children staying away, and the master’s patience would be severely tried when his pupils also nicked off to watch the hounds meet in the village, or a village wedding, or for Stokesley Races.
The earliest known school in Kirkby dates back to 1683 and was built opposite the Black Swan Inn by Henry Edmonds, a wealthy West Riding landowner.By 1821 the school had become a boys’ Grammar School and in 1873 a larger school was built in the grounds of the old school with funds raised by the inhabitants and a grant from the Diocese of York. The old school was then used as the residence for the
headmaster.
The school in those pre-antibiotic days was often hit with serious epidemics often leading to tragedy. Influenza, scabies, mumps, scartlet fever, ringworm, whooping cough and measles, would lay low
entire classes. Whooping cough could close the school for a month at a time. Further down the road at Stokesley, the school was closed for four out of seven months in 1902 on account of scarlet fever.
This article originally appeared in the August 1999 issue of Now
& Then Magazine
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