SEX DISCRIMINATION, personal feuds, and rule with a rod of iron – it’s all in the past at Ampney Crucis Church of England Primary School.

Northing short of strike action would appease the current femail teachers if they were faced with the 1834 situation – master of the boys being paid £25 a year compared to the school mistress’s £5 a year!

The children don’t have to witness personal feuds between their headmaster Mr Fletcher and the vicar. Mr Fletcher wouldn’t hoist the Union jack up the flag pole if the current vicar left the parish. And the days when the children got caned for laughing at the antics of their elders or for talking or just for looking the wrong way are long gone.

The little school with the long history began in 1791 as a charity school endowed by Lord of the Manor Robert Pleydell in 1722. Endowed with a rent charge of £80 per annum for ever, two boys or girls were to be apprenticed and every year clothing was bought for them and instruction in reading, writing and Christian knowledge was provided.

According to The Story of a Charity School written by Clive Pain and current headmaster Mr Fletcher, the school was established on the profits of 13 acres, two roods and one perch of land in Ranbury Farm in the parish of Ampney St Peter or Eastington.

The five trustees appointed paid £65 a year towards the maintenance of the master and mistress and clothing and instruction of the poor boys and girls and they also chose the master and mistress.

And who would guess that the now modern school sprang from very modest beginnings, a house converted into a residence for the master and mistress and barn being used to accommodate the children.

It is not known where exactly this first school was sited but it is believed that it stood where the present school stands.

It wasn’t until 1862 that the trustees decided to build a new school house because of the dilapidated state of the old one. That one was completed in 1791.

In the 1830s the children wore, thanks to one of the bequests of the 1722 endowment giving clothing to the poor, clothes made by the local tailor and dressmaker of the headmistress. The boys wore blue caps with black ribbons, white linen shirts, blue coats and waistcoats, leather breeches, blue worsted stockings (which the girls knitted) and black leather shoes. The girls wore straw bonnets with black ribbon, white calico cotton frocks, petticoats and whalebone stays, blue caps, blue worsted stockings and black leather shoes. And they all sat around desks which were placed around the edge of the classroom, the area in the middle being reserved for the master.

In 1833 the school was enlarged, new benches were erected, a new fire grate was installed in the little room and one room was divided into two units. And it would appear that there were two schools one for girls run by a Mrs Hall and one for the boys run by Henry Kemble. The system of charity bequests and teaching appears to have continued until 1862 when the term ‘charity’ was dropped from common usage and the school became known as Ampney Free School.

Standard, October 24, 1980