150 years of St Leonard's CE School 2024!

On Friday 6th December 2024, the staff and children at St Leonard’s were transported back to the Victorian era to experience a range of activities to mark 150 years since the opening of the school.

The school first opened the doors to local children in 1874 when pupils would have been taught reading, writing and arithmetic alongside daily readings from the Bible.

As part of our Victorian experience, children and staff were invited to attend school wearing traditional dress and  our classrooms were transformed to allow boys and girls to be taught separately. Technology was abandoned for the day and work was recorded on chalkboards with staff conducting regular deportment checks to ensure pupils were clean and tidy. Children discovered facts about Queen Victoria and her long reign as the English Monarch and also looked at images from our school from 1874 to 2024. 

We were fortunate to receive information from members of the public who had a link to our school and who shared information and artefacts with the school community. Mr Alan Scott was the son of Eric Scott, the Headteacher of St Leonard’s from 1950 - 1981. He told us that the school used to be a lot smaller with only 3 teachers and the classrooms had open coal fires in them where the children huddled to keep warm. Mrs Wendy Wearden was a pupil at this time and remembers doing PE on the old wooden floor and getting splinters in her feet. She also let us see her old school books which were very different to the ones we used today.

 Here are some of the historical items we investigated:

A traditional Victorian stew was served for lunch before children started to explore some of the Christmas traditions that were introduced in Victorian times. Pupils were taught how Tom Smith created the first crackers as a way of selling more sweets and also looked at Victorian Christmas cards and decorations. 

The children were able to reflect on our Victorian day at the end of the celebrations. This is what some of the classes said: