This month, Barry Cuff takes us back to school with four pre-1914 postcards from his collection, each offering a glimpse of Dorset playground life before the First World War
Bockhampton School in Lower Bockhampton closed in 1961. Thomas Hardy attended the school as a young boy, starting in 1848, and the old school building features in Under the Greenwood Tree as Mellstock schoolhouse, where Fancy Day worked as a teacher.
What is now St Andrews, Fontmell Magna School, is still very much in use as a school. The earliest newspaper mention of the school was in 1870, when Sir Richard and Lady Glyn treated the children to a sports day, at the end of which the children received ‘large pieces of cake and apples to take home to their parents, and tell them what a happy day they had spent at the school.’
Spetisbury School is also still in use – a bequest by Dr. Charles Sloper, a rector of Spetisbury, left £500 in his will to found a village school and in 1733, one was founded in the village. In 1862 it moved to its current building.
Warmwell School was built in 1863. Between 1918 and 1923, Barry’s mother used to walk there every day from Moigns Down – one and a half miles each way.
