Conington: Education

Education

Schoolmasters were occasionally recorded between 1590 and 1670, (fn. 1) but not thereafter (fn. 2) until after 1800. In 1818, when c. 20 children were being taught, the rector paid for the older ones to attend Fen Stanton school. (fn. 3) In the early 1830s a new rector and his wife started a Sunday school for 48 children, while c. 25 others attended a weekday dame school and one which allegedly took boarders. (fn. 4) In 1841 the rector gave in trust a site just east of the church upon which there was built, with government and other grants, a school and teacher's house, which also accommodated the Sunday school. (fn. 5) The National school held there, at first taught by a salaried master, but from the 1850s by a mistress, had almost 50 pupils by 1846. (fn. 6) From the 1870s to the 1890s it was supported by voluntary rates, in 1873 of £1 per 100 a., and school pence. The rector, who met deficits, taught there two or three times a week until after 1885. Night schools were also held c. 1871 and in the mid 1880s. The average number attending the day school, 18-21 in 1874, (fn. 7) fell to barely 16 in 1895, (fn. 8) not then thought to be well taught. A separate infants' classroom was added in 1904, (fn. 9) attendance having recovered c. 1900 to almost 30, (fn. 10) before falling again below 20 until the 1930s. (fn. 11) The school, the smallest in Cambridgeshire, was repeatedly threatened with closure from 1923. From 1929 the older children were sent to Elsworth, to which the younger ones also went after Conington school was closed in 1954. (fn. 12) The grey-brick building was sold by 1961. (fn. 13)