The School early 20th century

The School in the foreground

The School c. 1925

Clive Brewer, Bernard Frank, Alan Smith & Peter Scaif walking to Marton School 1946.

Social in the School room 1962

Harold Spenceley, Trevor Hornby, Mary Walton, Margaret Wood, Phillis Hornby and Doris Frank. Village function 1960’s.

Social in the School room 1962

School photograph 1900 (Yew Tree Cottage background)

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The School early 20th century

The School

Lady Boynton founded the free school in 1700.  The school also received money later from the John Stockton Trust.

The school stood opposite the Church for many years and took children from a number of surrounding villages.  They all had to walk.  The parish register records the death of schoolmaster John Sparling in 1733. Christopher Dring was schoolmaster in 1779 when he died age 55.  Robert Bean was schoolmaster in 1795.  The School house was rebuilt in 1928.

School records are held on microfilm at Northallerton Records Office.  Attendances were carefully recorded. Children were often kept at home for the hay and corn harvest and for fruit picking in September.  Half day holidays were graciously allowed for local occasions like Pickering Gala or to honour a Royal wedding. National school holidays were Ascension day, Good Friday to Easter Tuesday, Whit Monday and Tuesday, Saturday and Shrove Tuesday, 4 weeks at harvest, 2 weeks at Christmas.

In 1844 it was estimated that about 25% of pupils left school at the age of nine, 50% at ten, 25% at twelve.  In 1893 the Normanby school average attendance was 39 but only 17 in 1896.  The local churchman was a regular visitor.  In the 1890s the fabric of the building was unsatisfactory and the roof leaked.  A list of songs for examination in August 1893 included The Brook, The Clock , The Minstrel Boy, Comrades True, If a Body and the Sick dolly.

A Yorkshire Gazette article of 1908 mentioned that the school was thriving with a number of pupils walking each day from Great Barugh.  There were two teachers, one for infants and one for the older children.  Margaret Wood remembers up to 40 children at the school.  The schoolmaster was Mr Dodd's  in 1929 when she left at the age of 14.

After the school closed in 1938 the children went to Marton and the schoolroom was used by the W I, a youth club and for Church suppers.

This is the site of the former School.

Directories confirm the following

School Teachers:

1823 - Robert Bean

1840 - John Featherstone

1879 - Miss Alice Pybus

1890 - Miss Eliz. Annie Smorthwaite

1905 - Miss Mary Stowell average attendance 22

1913 - Miss Mary Stowell average attendance 32

1921 - Miss Mary Stowell average attendance 34

1925 - Miss Mary Stowell average attendance 34

 During the Second World War the school was re-opened for evacuees.  A teacher was brought from the Middlesbrough area.  He lodged in the cottage behind the school.

The school was conveyed to the Church at a cost of £100 plus £29-10s-6d legal fees on 21st Nov 1961.  Repairs were expensive and the fabric deteriorated.  In 1968 county council classes were still being held in the schoolroom, but in 1971 the school was sold to Lady Bucher for £50 and demolished soon after.

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