A History of Preston
in Hertfordshire
The nuggets of hitherto undiscovered information about Preston that come to light continue to astonish. A month ago, on the Hertfordshire Genealogy web site, I spotted a reference to an early school at Preston . Here is what was revealed.....
The web site ‘Genealogy in Hertfordshire’ noted that Preston School was mentioned
in the book, Bringing Literacy to Rural England -
I managed to obtain a copy -
These are the facts about Preston’s first school: it was united with the National Society on 14 January 1818. No grant from the National Society was recorded. It then withdrew from union with the National Society sometime between 1828 and 1832.
In the absence of hard evidence, some musings are perhaps encouraged. The dates noted are not necessarily when the school was built or demolished. The School was under the umbrella of the Anglican Church of St Mary’s, Hitchin. (This is not as obvious as it may appear as the ‘British School’ at Hitchin was established not by the Church of England, but by Quakers in 1810. The Anglican response of a National School at Hitchin was in April,1817. Preston’s School thus entered the union less than a year later)
As it was administered by the National Society, Preston’s School was neither a (straw) Plaiting School nor a ‘Dame’ School.
Gleaning information from other sources, the Preston census of 1821 records Simon
Stevens as a ‘schoolteacher’ -
Looking at the broader picture, the Lord of the Manor, Joseph Darton died on 31 October 1816 and was succeeded by his wife, Elizabeth Darton. Was she the guiding hand behind Preston’s new school? At this time, agriculture was flourishing and several land owners such as Elizabeth were able to contribute towards the building and maintenance of schools. And remember that no grant from the National Society is recorded
What sort of building might Preston School have been? Again, this is purely conjecture: Elizabeth Darton’s son, Thomas Harwood Darton built a new, substantial school only thirty years later, in 1847. This might suggest that Preston’s first school was of more ‘temporary’ construction.
In 1815, at Wheathampstead, Herts a school measuring 36’ x 15’ x 8’6’’ was constructed
to accommodate 100 children. A barn was used for its model. It was built with brick
floors and foundations while the walls were ‘brick with band timbering around the
room’. If built following the pattern of a barn, it was presumably water and windproof.
Might Preston’s school have been constructed similarly -
As to the site of Preston’s first school, it would be wonderful to have a map of
the village circa 1825 with ‘Sch’ inscribed on it. But no such map exists. However,
might it be that the first school was on the site of the 1847 incarnation -
So there we have it -