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Other Gosport Books

New Book By

John Sadden

Discovery Centre Books

Gosport Gardening

Photos of the UK

Weather In Gosport

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Gosport Weather

Occasionally the boys were treated to some form of entertainment or an educational demonstration in school. An exhibition of “dissolving views" was given in the schoolroom at 4.30pm one day in 1874.

The first mention of school photos being taken came in July 1874. In the 1870's there seems to have been some widening of the curriculum to include mental arithmetic, algebra, cricket and a kind of football. The Master formed a cricket club and collected subscriptions to pay for equipment. A new game was introduced, which was adapted from football. Besides the new subjects, the boys seemed to have learned more songs. The Master listed the following school songs in the Log Book in February 1875:-

Some Songs were sung at a concert. There was a half-holiday on account of the Concert. The Master usually taught the songs. He sometimes taught two or three Classes together and perhaps this gave the Pupil Teachers a chance to study in school time.

A boy or girl, who wanted to become a teacher, and who was considered suitable, would be promoted to being a stipendiary monitor from the top class of the school. The Pupil Teachers had to study for examinations as well as teach. The Master gave their lessons, sometimes after school, and sometimes before school, starting at 7am. The Pupil Teachers taught and studied for five years under the guidance of the Master and at the end of that time, if they had passed the necessary examinations, they could go to Training College. At this tine, the Master was the only certified teacher in the Boys' Department. He often found great difficulty in teaching his class and organising his school, because the monitors and Pupil Teachers were too young and inexperienced for large classes. There were no school secretaries then to deal with the paperwork.

When the Master was ill the Pupil Teachers had to teach his class and there classes, but were superintended by the Rev. F. Tapply. On one occasion the Rev F. Tapply probably carried on the school alone, as two Pupil Teachers had left the previous week to begin their training. This time the Master was away for two days. The children were given a holiday the second afternoon!

The Master was very hard worked. There was his routine schoolwork He gave lessons to the Pupil Teachers. Besides this he often stayed after school hours (at 12 noon and 4pm) in order to help backward boys with their work and also to ‘keep in' and give extra work to those who had not worked hard enough or who had misbehaved.                         

The attendance figures and working conditions were affected both by hot and cold weather The classroom was often too hot in summer and too cold in winter. Towards the end of October in 1875 the Master commented that the room was cold and he must have fires if the weather were to continue so cold. Two days later he had the stove fixed ready for fires. The stove was moved into the middle of the room. Near the end of April the following year the stove was moved away and the desks rearranged. In June and July the children had some lessons like reading in the playground if it was hot. There were pigsties too close to the school in 1879 so bad smells sometimes added to the problems, as windows on the west side had to be kept shut. The previous summer an effort was made to provide further ventilation by having more ventilating holes cut in the ceiling. The School Room was cleared and whitewashed each year during the Harvest Holiday (August). Any necessary repairs were done during that holiday too. Earlier the School roof had been whitewashed to make the room cool during the summer (!). According to the suggestions of H.M.I. a sink was placed In the lobby in 1877 A further improvement in 1879 was the placing of glass panels in the classroom door. Fine weather in July tempted some boys to earn, a little for their parents by helping in the harvest fields. In September some of them helped with the potato harvest and some went blackberry picking for their mothers. In October and November 1874 it was recorded that a great many boys left temporarily to work in the fields.              NEXT WEEK