Before the Schoolhouse
During the middle of the nineteenth century, this part of Loxwood included the Wey and Arun Junction Canal, the Onslow Arms, the turnpike road, Brewhurst Mill and several farms. There was, however, no school providing daily education for all local children. Some attended privately run dame schools, including one associated with the Dependent Brethren at Hall House and another taught by Mary Jenkins in the roadside outbuilding at Garton House.
The nearest Sunday school was at Alfold Church. John Arthur Garton later recalled that, as a boy in Loxwood, he went there because the village had no Sunday school of its own. The arrival of John Davies Trigge and Emma Andrews in the early 1870s was followed first by the establishment of a Sunday school in Loxwood and later by the opening of the village school.
John Davies Trigge and Emma Andrews
John Davies Trigge was born in Brompton, London, in 1828. At the age of thirteen he was a pupil at Foy’s Boarding School in West Brompton. By the age of twenty-two he had become headmaster of the Central National School in Church Street, Brighton, a Church of England school housed in a Regency Gothic building.
A school inspection reported in the Brighton press in 1850 examined boys and girls in reading, writing, grammar, history, written and mental arithmetic, and geography. The report stated that the inspectors were satisfied with the results and expected the changes introduced under John Trigge to improve the standard of education at the school.
John Trigge supported Church of England elementary education. In 1853 the first meeting of the Brighton and Sussex Church of England Schoolmasters’ Association was held at the Central National School, with John Trigge in the chair. He addressed the teachers on the purpose of the new association, which was established under the patronage of the Bishop of Chichester and other local clergy.
In 1856 John Trigge left the Central National School and later studied at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was ordained at Chichester in 1865 and returned to Brighton, where he served at St Peter’s. Emma Andrews was then working at the Vicarage in Montpellier Road for Henry Michael Wagner, Vicar of Brighton. John and Emma married at St Luke’s Church, Chelsea, in 1871 and moved to the Loxwood district soon afterwards.
The 1870 Education Act and the new parish
By 1869 Loxwood was seeking separate ecclesiastical status from Wisborough Green, and John Trigge was living at Burchetts, Wisborough Green. The Elementary Education Act 1870 required deficiencies in elementary school provision to be identified and allowed locally elected school boards to provide schools where they were needed. School boards could also make local attendance byelaws; compulsory attendance throughout England followed under the 1880 Act.
After their marriage in 1871, John and Emma settled in Loxwood. John served the Chapel of Ease, while Emma established a Sunday school there. Sunday schools combined religious teaching with elementary reading and writing, but they met only at limited times and could not provide the daily education offered by a village school.
An Order in Council dated 9 August 1873 created the separate ecclesiastical district of Loxwood, and John Trigge became its first vicar later that year. A new vicarage was built on the road above Loxwood Bridge in 1874 to designs by Maynard-Shaw of Gray’s Inn, London. Robert Pink of Hambledon carried out the work at a cost of about £1,500, and the road became known locally as Vicarage Hill.
Building Loxwood Schoolhouse, 1874-1877
The Wisborough Green School Board was established in 1874 to oversee elementary education across the district, including the proposed school at Loxwood. Its minute book begins with a meeting on 31 August 1874. George Napper of Lakers Lodge was among the Board members, and Henry Hemmings of Loxwood Place was involved locally as a surveyor.
At the Board meeting on 27 October 1874, it was agreed that the steward of the Manor of Bury should be asked whether the lord of the manor would grant a piece of waste land near Loxwood Bridge for the school. On 9 March 1875 the Board was informed that the chosen site had been granted at the manor court on 11 February, and members arranged for the exact area to be marked out.
The Board considered competing architectural proposals before selecting plans prepared by James Girdwood of 49 Pall Mall, London. Tenders were then invited for the construction work. Edwin Woolgar of Itchingfield was selected, and the building contract was formally signed on 16 September 1875. The contract price was £1,123, and Woolgar’s performance was backed by sureties. The agreed completion date was 31 July 1876.
On 24 February 1876 Girdwood proposed moving the infant schoolroom from the front of the principal schoolroom to the rear, and the Board approved the alteration. The work later fell behind schedule and the July completion date passed. On 10 October 1876 the Board instructed its clerk to write to Woolgar and one of his sureties about the slow progress at Loxwood School.
Construction and contractual difficulties continued into 1877, and the Board began arranging some of the outstanding work separately. On 5 June it accepted Henry Spooner’s tender of £53 15s for the boundary wall, brick paving and fencing at Loxwood School, with completion required by 11 August. Books, slates, forms and other equipment were also ordered as the building was prepared for use. Woolgar’s contract ended in dispute, and he was declared bankrupt the following year.
On 16 October 1877 Reverend Trigge asked to use the Schoolhouse for the Sunday school. The Board agreed that the building could be used on Sundays and at other times without rent, provided that the Board was not required to meet any expenses or pay for damage arising from that use. The Sunday school therefore transferred from the old church to the new building before the day school opened.
The school opens, 1878
The Schoolhouse was built of brick with tiled roofs, using locally made bricks. Finger marks left during manufacture can still be seen on some of them. The large front window was set high in the wall, with a small opening section near the top. The date stone above the window reads 1876, the year in which the original contract required the building to be completed, and carries the initials L.P.S.
The school entrance was on the left, through the playground. From the lobby, the main door opened into the large schoolroom, with the girls’ cloakroom on one side and the boys’ cloakroom on the other. Four blocks of three-tiered desks accommodated 48 children on benches. The teacher’s desk was raised, and a door at the far end led to the smaller infant room. The school was heated by open fires, and water was drawn from a well in the grounds. A spire and weathervane rose above the roof.
The schoolmaster’s house formed part of the same building. Its gate and entrance were on the right. The house contained three bedrooms, a parlour, a kitchen and a scullery, with a garden on the right-hand side.
During 1877 the Board advertised for a married schoolmaster whose wife would assist in the school and teach sewing. Several candidates were considered. On 27 November Charles Smith of Stepney was appointed master of Loxwood School, with his wife Lydia appointed to assist him and teach sewing. Their combined salary was £90 a year, together with coal, and the Board allowed £4 towards the cost of moving from Stepney. The appointment began on 1 January 1878, and the Board fixed Monday 7 January as the date on which the school would open for instruction.
At the time of their appointment, Charles was nineteen and Lydia twenty-one. They were the first teaching household to occupy the Schoolhouse, and Lydia continued to work at the school for many years. Teaching relied heavily on repetition, reading aloud, copying from the board, and regular practice in arithmetic and writing. The original classroom provided places for 48 pupils. By 1884 attendance had risen to 111, and by 1886 to 120.
The schoolchildren regularly took part in village events. Newspaper reports describe them attending tea parties, fairs and the annual Garton festivals, where they sang, danced, decorated tents, and received books and other presents. At the 1888 festival the children assembled at the school before the Alfold band led them to the field opposite the Onslow Arms. A former pupil, writing in 1935, remembered Mr Smith, ‘happy school days’ and John Garton’s annual fete. One early pupil later entered Queen Victoria’s household and appeared in the procession at the marriage of one of the Queen’s grandsons.
The school after 1897
Emma Trigge continued to be involved in Sunday-school work after the day school opened. By 1891 she was also associated with a Sunday school in Brighton. Rudgwick station provided the nearest rail connection for journeys between the Loxwood district and Brighton.
During the 1890s John Davies Trigge was also raising money for a replacement parish church. The proposed church was eventually built opposite the Schoolhouse on Vicarage Hill. A subscription prospectus listed £300 from the Bishop of Chichester’s Fund, together with other grants and private subscriptions. Reverend Trigge died unexpectedly on 12 July 1897, before the new church was built.
His funeral service was held three days later in the old Loxwood church. Schoolchildren and teachers attended, together with villagers and clergy from Loxwood, neighbouring parishes and Brighton. The Reverend W. H. B. Mainprice, Vicar of Wisborough Green, conducted the service in Loxwood, after which Reverend Trigge was buried in Brighton.
The school continued under the Wisborough Green School Board. The admission register beginning on 26 September 1898 is headed ‘Loxwood School, Mixed Department’. It records pupils’ names, dates of birth, parents or guardians, previous schools, educational standards and reasons for leaving. Maurice Botting of Brewhurst was among the local figures who later served on the School Board.
The Schoolhouse was extended in 1912. The plans provided separate approaches and cloakroom arrangements for boys, girls and infants, together with a new toilet block. These alterations added to the original 1870s layout while the building continued to serve as the village school.
The last headmasters and the Time Capsule
Roland Edward Parkin became headmaster in March 1953. He came from Doncaster, where he had been an assistant headmaster at Dunsville County Primary School and had managed and coached the Doncaster Boys’ football team. At Loxwood he established a pen-pal link with children in Doncaster, and a group of Doncaster pupils visited Loxwood in September 1958.
In April 1959 Parkin arranged a coach trip to Wembley for parents and pupils to watch the schoolboy international between England and Germany. The party also spent part of the day sightseeing in London. The following week Raymond Hempshall, the England schoolboy goalkeeper and one of Parkin’s former Doncaster players, visited Loxwood School.
Parkin left Loxwood at Christmas 1959 to take a teaching post in Germany. Henry ‘Harry’ Pepper, then deputy headmaster of Northgate Primary School in Crawley, was appointed as his successor and took up the post at the beginning of 1960. Pepper was a sportsman and former football referee. He had lost an eye during the Second World War and wore the black eye patch remembered by former pupils.
In 1963 the children watched the widening of Loxwood Bridge below the Schoolhouse. As part of the work, the side of the bridge beside the Onslow Arms was moved about 15 metres. The pupils prepared a time capsule, which was sealed into the new bridge wall.
The move to Nicholsfield
Loxwood County Primary School moved to the new site at Nicholsfield in 1964, bringing the use of the Victorian Schoolhouse on Vicarage Hill as the village school to an end. Henry Pepper moved with the pupils and staff. The new school was formally opened in 1967, and the programme for the ceremony is held at West Sussex Record Office.
The move ended eighty-six years of daily schooling in the Vicarage Hill building, from its opening on 7 January 1878 until the transfer to Nicholsfield in 1964. The former Schoolhouse, the Vicarage and the later Church of St John the Baptist were all built as part of the development of Vicarage Hill that began in the 1870s.
