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Title: Ladyroyd School, Shackleton Hill - DAH00213
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Title
Ladyroyd School, Shackleton Hill - DAH00213
Description
The Little School on the Moors
An Upper Calder Valley school enjoyed unusual celebrity status in the 1950s when it claimed to be the smallest in Yorkshire.
Following a story in the press that Snilesworth School, Northallerton - with six pupils - was the smallest in the county, the four students at Wadsworth Walshaw Non-Provided School indignantly challenged this assumption.
Lady Royd's, as the school was better known locally, was the smallest, pupil Glyn Roberts, aged 10, informed the editor of the Yorkshire Post, in addition to which his fellow pupil, nine-year-old David Bradley, boasted that their lady teacher travelled to the school on a motor bike!
In the best tradition of a hot news story, a reporter was despatched forthwith to Lady Royd's, where he interviewed "hells angel" Miss Margaret Greenwood - "her motor cycle parked near her desk" - and the quartet who had laid down the challenge, who also included Vernon Halstead and Charles Roberts.
When asked what they particularly liked about their school "the sharp-witted youngsters were ready with replies":
"I was at a big school once but there was too much noise;"
"I like a small school because there is no-one to hate;"
and, most tellingly, "I would not go to a town school for £2,000,000."
Miss Greenwood commented: "They say they are going to close the school now that there are only four pupils left." Sadly that came true shortly afterwards.
Lady Royd School, Shackleton Hill
The smallest School in England!
Madge McGuire
(former headmistress)
Recalled in 1988
*Comments, and slight differences of opinion written in by Joyce, and agreed by the other pupils: Glyn, Charlie and Vernon.
Lady Royd School
Considering it is about 40 years since I was WRCC peripatetic head teacher, appointed to take charge of Lady Royd School – official name – Wadsworth Walshaw NP Secondary and Primary School – my memories of it are more personal than factual.
However, here are some of my reminiscences ……..
The school was founded by the Savile family, probably called after Lady Savile, hence the name of the school. The estates of the Saviles were extensive, the Hardcastle Crags one being mainly for grouse shooting and water rights, as well as the recreational facilities along the river Hebden’s glorious valley, mainly magnificently wooded, but with other features too. In the same area the beautiful Blake Dean valley was also part of the estate.
Reverting now to Lady Royd School which had, I believe over 40 pupils on roll at one time. These were obviously called from habitations connected with the aforesaid activities and associated work of the estate, its farms and the Shooting Lodge – almost like a small hamlet.
I believe all the pupils were accommodated. I’m not sure, for when I was teaching there the only classroom was the one downstairs, which would have been overcrowded with 20. The room was quite pleasant once I’d covered the flaking paint on the walls by large, colourful and mostly informative posters. The windows were deep-set, large, and low, and beyond was a wonderful view, commented upon by the school’s inspector as being equal to many in Switzerland. He ought to have visited in 1947 when 14 feet high drifts of snow above icy land marooned me – isolated me to be correct – for a week from the school and home. Fortunately, the school’s kind caretaker, Mrs Shaw, allowed me to stay at her farm, Owlers Farm, about a mile from the school. So heavy and lasting was the snowfall that it was Easter before the school re-opened. (I was posted elsewhere until that time.)
She spent many of these weeks giving one pupil extra tuition at her house up Hirst Road, Hebden Bridge.
The gem of the classroom was a large open fire with a huge and high fireguard round it. On the latter, on wet and snowy days, garments would be hung to dry.
The roads to the school on each side, either from Shackleton Hill or the Shooting Lodge were very exposed. Sometimes the children were weighed down by two or three layers of outer clothing and almost always in bad weather extra socks for changing were needed.
The children were little heroines and heroes for there was no transport for them, not even for three children who came as far away as Weet Ing. There was one exception – a boy who had a bicycle.
Surprisingly there were few absences and little ill health amongst the children. They came from very caring families and were friendly and intelligent children whose ages, when I taught there ranged from 5 to 15 years – the school leaving age had not risen to 16 then.
Although passing scholarships is not the be-all of life and education, the Lady Royd scholars were so successful in these, that before my time at the school and during it, the numbers on roll dwindled, partly because of scholarship children leaving to go to the Grammar School and one to the Halifax Technical College. Families with children of school age moving from the area also added to the decrease.
At the closure of the school on the 14 May 1948 there were only 4 scholars on roll, 2 of them were due to attend the Grammar School in the ensuing term, the 3rd went to Halifax Technical College and the 4th moved from the area.
As I’ve said, the school was an estate school, but it was under the WRCC authority and also a Church of England school in the Heptonstall Parish. The diocesan inspector of religious instruction like the children when he came to the school.
Supplies, stock and equipment from the WRCC to the school were generous so that in some things the school was almost over-stocked – a rarity in schools – but appreciated notwithstanding. This was particularly so with regard to material for craft and art of which there was a plentiful supply. Of course delivery of supplies was by small, large vans. Perhaps this was as well for once a delivery consisted of one mop head only. Paint and water jars for art, handicraft and projects were kept in a small room built into the hillside, as used to be a common method of building in the districts round about. It wasn’t a pleasant room, being dark and dank – no place for dawdling. However it was a clue to what the building had probably been – that is a farm labourer’s cottage and the dismal room for the kitchen.
Enclosed rickety stairs from the classroom went to an upper floor consisting of a long room with two other rooms branching off. The long room had a fireplace and the window afforded plenty of light so that it would have been an attractive living room above the classroom for the teacher’s dwelling quarters. I’ve a feeling that some of the 40 or so pupils might have been accommodated in the long upper room, under the supervision of one or two of the older pupils – as in ‘pupil teaching’ fashion.
My scholars were not allowed upstairs because the floorboards were unsafe in parts. However, it was safe enough to keep stationery and the bulk of the stock up there if one stepped with care when dealing with it.
Dinners and milk for the children came at mid-day by taxi from the school meals centre kitchen in Hebden Bridge. Mrs Shaw, Lady Royd School’s caretaker, made the third of her four journeys walking to and from school to attend to the dinners. The cloakroom had facilities for washing up.
Because of the wide age range, much of the children’s education was individual or group projects or assignments.
As for subjects such as nature, this was in a way, the children’s own natural habitat. For example, my 5 year old scholar’s introduction to the green woodpecker was by first hearing the reverberating staccato-like chiselling sound of its beak against bark and wood, before the unforgettable first sight of its vivid plumage as it flew like a brilliant flash of coloured light through the woodland. This happened as we were walking home from school by the Shackleton Hill short route to Crimsworth Dean where she lived.
Above Gibson Mill, of interest historically and geographically, the road flattened out and was known locally as the Flat. To one side of this was the River Hebden over which there was an iron footbridge at this point. It was an ideal place for various activities and not far from the school. It was on the Flat that I saw my first red squirrel of the woods.
Because we were only a small unit and not easily able to intermix with other schools, (because of isolation and distance) I arranged a joint school outing with Pecket Well CC School. ?None of us remember this!
Lady Royd School had no lighting except by candles, which I considered to be a possible source of danger. Therefore, on dark days story telling, poetry etc., took over in dramatic or homely unlit gloom whichever way one viewed the situation.
After many requests I did eventually obtain permission to lighten the darkness by having a calor gas lamp installed. By today’s regulations regarding fire hazards, that would be considered dangerous. I suppose it was, however, a daily danger to which people of those times were exposed, for many homes and farms depended upon oil-lamps and candles for light and open fires etc for heating and cooking.
This school yard was really the farmyard and we shared it with turkeys. Fortunately, we were few in number and the birds kept their distance. They must have been the most scarlet gobble turkeys on earth.
Originally, the teaching post was for a non-certified teacher, but the retired teacher, though fully qualified, had taken the post at a reduced salary because she lived at and farmed Lady Royd Farm and it was convenient to teach at the school across the yard.
I was eventually given a cottage to rent further along the road at Mansfield. Although the cottage was most attractive and I liked it, I only used it about twice because its inhabitants and I were not compatible. Wood beetles lived there!
By this time too I had an easier means of getting to the school. At first, I used to get a lift on the milk-collecting wagon. I boarded it at Nursery Nook and rode to where the Hardcastle Crags road forks at the top, one road going to the Shooting Lodge and mine, to the right, to Shackleton Hill and the school.
I walked the latter distance as I did my homeward journey. Then, instead of the milk wagon being at Nursery Nook at 8 am its time was changed to 7 am. That is when I ventured to buy a motor-bike, plus leather coat, Biggles type helmet, gauntlets, knee-high boots, goggles and scarf and haversack.
One of my lasting memories of my time at Lady Royd School is being overtaken whilst riding my motor-bike on a downward stretch of road from the school by my very gleeful bicycle-riding scholar. Roles reversed, I was very much the learner. My novice speed was so slow that I could have been in a bygone age and been preceded by a man walking with a red flag held aloft.
An Upper Calder Valley school enjoyed unusual celebrity status in the 1950s when it claimed to be the smallest in Yorkshire.
Following a story in the press that Snilesworth School, Northallerton - with six pupils - was the smallest in the county, the four students at Wadsworth Walshaw Non-Provided School indignantly challenged this assumption.
Lady Royd's, as the school was better known locally, was the smallest, pupil Glyn Roberts, aged 10, informed the editor of the Yorkshire Post, in addition to which his fellow pupil, nine-year-old David Bradley, boasted that their lady teacher travelled to the school on a motor bike!
In the best tradition of a hot news story, a reporter was despatched forthwith to Lady Royd's, where he interviewed "hells angel" Miss Margaret Greenwood - "her motor cycle parked near her desk" - and the quartet who had laid down the challenge, who also included Vernon Halstead and Charles Roberts.
When asked what they particularly liked about their school "the sharp-witted youngsters were ready with replies":
"I was at a big school once but there was too much noise;"
"I like a small school because there is no-one to hate;"
and, most tellingly, "I would not go to a town school for £2,000,000."
Miss Greenwood commented: "They say they are going to close the school now that there are only four pupils left." Sadly that came true shortly afterwards.
Lady Royd School, Shackleton Hill
The smallest School in England!
Madge McGuire
(former headmistress)
Recalled in 1988
*Comments, and slight differences of opinion written in by Joyce, and agreed by the other pupils: Glyn, Charlie and Vernon.
Lady Royd School
Considering it is about 40 years since I was WRCC peripatetic head teacher, appointed to take charge of Lady Royd School – official name – Wadsworth Walshaw NP Secondary and Primary School – my memories of it are more personal than factual.
However, here are some of my reminiscences ……..
The school was founded by the Savile family, probably called after Lady Savile, hence the name of the school. The estates of the Saviles were extensive, the Hardcastle Crags one being mainly for grouse shooting and water rights, as well as the recreational facilities along the river Hebden’s glorious valley, mainly magnificently wooded, but with other features too. In the same area the beautiful Blake Dean valley was also part of the estate.
Reverting now to Lady Royd School which had, I believe over 40 pupils on roll at one time. These were obviously called from habitations connected with the aforesaid activities and associated work of the estate, its farms and the Shooting Lodge – almost like a small hamlet.
I believe all the pupils were accommodated. I’m not sure, for when I was teaching there the only classroom was the one downstairs, which would have been overcrowded with 20. The room was quite pleasant once I’d covered the flaking paint on the walls by large, colourful and mostly informative posters. The windows were deep-set, large, and low, and beyond was a wonderful view, commented upon by the school’s inspector as being equal to many in Switzerland. He ought to have visited in 1947 when 14 feet high drifts of snow above icy land marooned me – isolated me to be correct – for a week from the school and home. Fortunately, the school’s kind caretaker, Mrs Shaw, allowed me to stay at her farm, Owlers Farm, about a mile from the school. So heavy and lasting was the snowfall that it was Easter before the school re-opened. (I was posted elsewhere until that time.)
She spent many of these weeks giving one pupil extra tuition at her house up Hirst Road, Hebden Bridge.
The gem of the classroom was a large open fire with a huge and high fireguard round it. On the latter, on wet and snowy days, garments would be hung to dry.
The roads to the school on each side, either from Shackleton Hill or the Shooting Lodge were very exposed. Sometimes the children were weighed down by two or three layers of outer clothing and almost always in bad weather extra socks for changing were needed.
The children were little heroines and heroes for there was no transport for them, not even for three children who came as far away as Weet Ing. There was one exception – a boy who had a bicycle.
Surprisingly there were few absences and little ill health amongst the children. They came from very caring families and were friendly and intelligent children whose ages, when I taught there ranged from 5 to 15 years – the school leaving age had not risen to 16 then.
Although passing scholarships is not the be-all of life and education, the Lady Royd scholars were so successful in these, that before my time at the school and during it, the numbers on roll dwindled, partly because of scholarship children leaving to go to the Grammar School and one to the Halifax Technical College. Families with children of school age moving from the area also added to the decrease.
At the closure of the school on the 14 May 1948 there were only 4 scholars on roll, 2 of them were due to attend the Grammar School in the ensuing term, the 3rd went to Halifax Technical College and the 4th moved from the area.
As I’ve said, the school was an estate school, but it was under the WRCC authority and also a Church of England school in the Heptonstall Parish. The diocesan inspector of religious instruction like the children when he came to the school.
Supplies, stock and equipment from the WRCC to the school were generous so that in some things the school was almost over-stocked – a rarity in schools – but appreciated notwithstanding. This was particularly so with regard to material for craft and art of which there was a plentiful supply. Of course delivery of supplies was by small, large vans. Perhaps this was as well for once a delivery consisted of one mop head only. Paint and water jars for art, handicraft and projects were kept in a small room built into the hillside, as used to be a common method of building in the districts round about. It wasn’t a pleasant room, being dark and dank – no place for dawdling. However it was a clue to what the building had probably been – that is a farm labourer’s cottage and the dismal room for the kitchen.
Enclosed rickety stairs from the classroom went to an upper floor consisting of a long room with two other rooms branching off. The long room had a fireplace and the window afforded plenty of light so that it would have been an attractive living room above the classroom for the teacher’s dwelling quarters. I’ve a feeling that some of the 40 or so pupils might have been accommodated in the long upper room, under the supervision of one or two of the older pupils – as in ‘pupil teaching’ fashion.
My scholars were not allowed upstairs because the floorboards were unsafe in parts. However, it was safe enough to keep stationery and the bulk of the stock up there if one stepped with care when dealing with it.
Dinners and milk for the children came at mid-day by taxi from the school meals centre kitchen in Hebden Bridge. Mrs Shaw, Lady Royd School’s caretaker, made the third of her four journeys walking to and from school to attend to the dinners. The cloakroom had facilities for washing up.
Because of the wide age range, much of the children’s education was individual or group projects or assignments.
As for subjects such as nature, this was in a way, the children’s own natural habitat. For example, my 5 year old scholar’s introduction to the green woodpecker was by first hearing the reverberating staccato-like chiselling sound of its beak against bark and wood, before the unforgettable first sight of its vivid plumage as it flew like a brilliant flash of coloured light through the woodland. This happened as we were walking home from school by the Shackleton Hill short route to Crimsworth Dean where she lived.
Above Gibson Mill, of interest historically and geographically, the road flattened out and was known locally as the Flat. To one side of this was the River Hebden over which there was an iron footbridge at this point. It was an ideal place for various activities and not far from the school. It was on the Flat that I saw my first red squirrel of the woods.
Because we were only a small unit and not easily able to intermix with other schools, (because of isolation and distance) I arranged a joint school outing with Pecket Well CC School. ?None of us remember this!
Lady Royd School had no lighting except by candles, which I considered to be a possible source of danger. Therefore, on dark days story telling, poetry etc., took over in dramatic or homely unlit gloom whichever way one viewed the situation.
After many requests I did eventually obtain permission to lighten the darkness by having a calor gas lamp installed. By today’s regulations regarding fire hazards, that would be considered dangerous. I suppose it was, however, a daily danger to which people of those times were exposed, for many homes and farms depended upon oil-lamps and candles for light and open fires etc for heating and cooking.
This school yard was really the farmyard and we shared it with turkeys. Fortunately, we were few in number and the birds kept their distance. They must have been the most scarlet gobble turkeys on earth.
Originally, the teaching post was for a non-certified teacher, but the retired teacher, though fully qualified, had taken the post at a reduced salary because she lived at and farmed Lady Royd Farm and it was convenient to teach at the school across the yard.
I was eventually given a cottage to rent further along the road at Mansfield. Although the cottage was most attractive and I liked it, I only used it about twice because its inhabitants and I were not compatible. Wood beetles lived there!
By this time too I had an easier means of getting to the school. At first, I used to get a lift on the milk-collecting wagon. I boarded it at Nursery Nook and rode to where the Hardcastle Crags road forks at the top, one road going to the Shooting Lodge and mine, to the right, to Shackleton Hill and the school.
I walked the latter distance as I did my homeward journey. Then, instead of the milk wagon being at Nursery Nook at 8 am its time was changed to 7 am. That is when I ventured to buy a motor-bike, plus leather coat, Biggles type helmet, gauntlets, knee-high boots, goggles and scarf and haversack.
One of my lasting memories of my time at Lady Royd School is being overtaken whilst riding my motor-bike on a downward stretch of road from the school by my very gleeful bicycle-riding scholar. Roles reversed, I was very much the learner. My novice speed was so slow that I could have been in a bygone age and been preceded by a man walking with a red flag held aloft.
Source
Dianne Harwood
Rights
PHDA - Dianne Harwood Collection
Relation
Pennine Horizons Digital Archive
Identifier
DAH00213.tif
Collection
Citation
“Ladyroyd School, Shackleton Hill - DAH00213,” Pennine Horizons Digital Archive, accessed April 20, 2024, https://penninehorizons.org/items/show/31135.
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