The Children Of St Giles’ School Ashtead Surrey

In 1852 the original part of the present St Giles’ School was built on land given by Mrs Mary Howard and erected at her expense. The school was then conveyed to the Rector of the parish and his successors for ever. This lovely old photo, taken around 1880, shows children leaving the school.

Initially the school was in three parts, infants, boys and girls but the boys and girls were amalgamated in 1900, despite protests from the girls’ mistress that although she would loyally do her part, she thought there was great moral harm in mixing the sexes! The head teacher would record daily the problems of running the school including the mystery of the missing dinners from the cloakroom, which was solved when a rat was found with it’s nose in one of the baskets!

 

The normal school day was 9am to 4.30pm with eight weeks holiday a year. There were however, often problems with attendance as children could be kept at home to help with work such as haymaking and in bad weather attendance often dropped due to problems with travelling to school. Until 1925 when a new school was built in Langley Bottom, sixty children from the area were driven to school in a horse drawn wagon. In this photo taken in 1911, Emily Ada Lisney is pictured aged about 7 years old in the back row 4th from the left.

In 2002 St Giles’ School celebrated it’s 150th Anniversary with a special Victorian Day and church service at St Giles Church.