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Dr Pete Jones (research manager)

Shire Professional Chartered Psychologists

The Old School House
7 Church Lane
Old Ravenfield
Nr Rotherham
South Yorkshire
S65 4NG 

VAT Number 754 1755 21  Company registration 04328450

Telephone: 01709 850828 / Email: pete@shirepro.co.uk

Click the map above for Multimap directions

Shire are located in the village of Old Ravenfield in South Yorkshire, between Rotherham and Docaster, close to the M1 and M18 motorways and the East Coast mainline from London.  The mainline train service from London Kings Cross takes 1 hour 40 minutes.

History of our building

Named by Viking invaders, the village is mentioned in the doomsday book of 1086.  The village, which is a conservation area, achieved first place in the small village category of the 'Britain in Bloom' competition in 2006, and first with a Gold medal in the Yorkshire in Bloom in 2007. www.oldravenfield.org.uk.  August 2008 saw the Britain in Bloom judges back in the village.

Shire Professional occupy the Old School House, which dates from the 18th century.  Buildings of a similar shape to the Shire offices were shown on the site in a survey by Fairbank in 1766.  Our offices were formerly the village school, provided by Squire Bosville of Ravenfield Hall, until around 1858 when the school room moved into an adjacent barn.  The house continued to be the home of successive schoool teachers until the 'new school' opened in 1909.  Until 1878 the squire funded the school, when it became the 'National School'. The north tower was added in 1897-8 as the school cloakroom, at the insistence of school inspectors. When the school closed in 1909 it became the Sunday school and reading room until sold when the Ravenfield estate was split up in 1920. The schoolroom measured 23ft 9 inches  by 11ft 9 inches in 1878.  This is several feet both shorter and narrower than the current room which may be accounted for by cupboards and paneling.  On the first day of term there were 35 children in the room although the school had 47 children on the records. Books didn’t arrive until 1885 and slates were used until this time.

The old school and the school house were converted and updated in the 1980's but the building still retains many of the original features, including shutters, narrow barn windows, as well as large high-level windows and ceilings.   It still has a unique set of side-sliding Yorkshire sash windows which are increasingly rare today.  In September 2008 a local joiner was able to get some of the the sliding windows working again, as they had been painted shut, probably since the school closed.  Surpisngly, despite not having been open for almost 100 years they still worked and were rot free.  Testimony to the quality of materials in the late 18th century. 

The building sits on the edge of the estate of the old Ravenfield Hall which burned down in the 1960's, although the hall gates, some lanscaping and walls can still be seen.  The hall stables and dovecote are now homes.  The parish church of St James (built in 1757 by the famous York Archtest John Carr) lies at the end of the road. The chuch has an unusual clockface, with no minute hand, said to be because local agricultural wokers needed only to know the hour, nothing more.  In fact single handed clocks were quite common at that time, althought not on Churches, because many people couldn't tell the time, never having seen a clock so having a single hand made learning to tell the time easier. The old Ravenfield Hall and Church were designed by Carr  and a number of buldings in the village bear his 'touch' although it is thought that Carr worked closely with one builder who would often take local work adjacent to Carr's major works and build in his style, which may explain why Carr is attributed with additional work in Ravenfield.

 

 

This is the Bosvile family from around 1905. Sadly it is believed that the son shown here was killed in the Great War.

 

The main school classroom windows, which were restored in 2002/3, were added in around 1857 by the Ravenfield estate carptenter, James Cardwell, and records show that in 1855, 49 square feet of glazing had already been added at a cost of seven and a half old pence per square foot.

The rear wall of the Old School Room (west side) is composed of unusual hand made bricks, each around 12inches long but only 2 inches high and 4 inches deep. The British Brick Society have been unable to date bricks of this size and type within South Yorkshire area and the only local examples relate to 13th century buildings in Lincolnshire. This supports a theory that the barn which later formed the school room may pre-date the school house itself and may have been the village tithe barn or have been rebuilt from materials from that barn. Brick was an expensive material at that time and it is rare to see it being used on internal walls.

 

 

The small tower on the north side was added in 1878 to provide a much needed cloakroom for the children and the porch is a later addition.  Children would have entered the school via steps from the north side, where the door-hangers and the lintel for the large wooden door are still visible. The floor level in the school room was lowered by about 2 feet (60cm) during renovations in the 1980’s.  At various times the school and the house have served as a library, shop, carpenters workshop and mill, some of them at the same time as it was a school. The School House and School were renovated in the early 1980’s to form the existing dwelling. The staircase was removed from the School House, when a new gallery was put in the school room to access the upper floor of the School House and a new third bedroom over the old cloakroom. The cellar has also been filled.

Between 1878 and when the school closed in 1909 the Mistress was required to keep a detailed log of life in the school.  These logs, which still exist, are retained at the ‘new’ school on Moor Lane.  When the school closed in 1909 the last teacher was Harriet Carr. 

 

On the 15th June, 1909, she recorded in the school log that she and her assistant teacher had that day:

 

 “…received notice to terminate their engagements in the present school.  The new school is to be opened after the Summer holidays.“

 

 She also added, “as the school will be Council and not Church, the mistress has been asked to leave the house as soon as possible. The landlord will not promise to let any house in the village in future to any teacher.  I have been in this school and house for twelve years.” 

 

On June 18th she wrote that the notice to leave the house had been temporarily rescinded.  On the school's last day, September 30th, 1909 Mrs. Carr's last entry in the Logbook included the following items: ­

 

“Today my engagement in this school terminates after twelve years service. The new school opens on Monday October 4th. Tomorrow the children have holiday.”

 

Harriet lived until 1946 and died in Sheffield aged 80.  She was buried in Crookes Cemetery (Sheffield).  Her husband George died in 1948 aged 83, again in Sheffield where they had lived before coming to Ravenfield.

 

We have copies of letters written by Harriett’s children from the school house in around 1905 and a picture of two of her children, Madge and Jessie from around that time.

 

 

 

The logs tell us much about life in the school, and how people lived in the village.  They document the illnesses that children had, the work that they did on the land and the importance of the church in school life (the vicar was an almost daily visitor).  They also document the social changes, as the teacher struggled to get local landowners and parents of children (local farm workers and miners) to see the value of educating their children. 

 

Life at the school, and indeed the school year itself was dominated by the needs of agriculture.  The current long summer school holiday is a legacy necessitated by children having to help with the harvest, which at that time ran well into September.  The school logs describe local farmers arriving at the school to take boys to pick rooks after the shoot, and of children not attending if there were crops to be cleaned or harvested.  Even the passing of the local hunt or the ripening of the village blackberries led to many children being absent. The school was frequently closed by epidemics of illness.  It is now difficult to understand the misery caused by scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria and even chicken pox and ringworm. Even chilblains were serious enough to render a child too ill to attend school.  Finally in 1908 the school was provided with a medical cabinet.  A first medical examination, probably held in the teacher’s house revealed “two dirty heads, two cases of ulcers in the eyes, and one case of crossed eyes.”

 

Weather also played an important role at the school.  Heavy rain or a fall of snow would significantly reduce the numbers attending, because few would have had shoes suitable for such conditions. 

 

Squire Bosville played a major role in the school.  As well as occasional formal visits he was also known to visit to insist school staff beat boys that he had seen misbehaving by climbing over the estate wall.  Staff duly obliged!  The village teacher was often simply someone within the village who had some education.  Indeed, at the death of one teacher Mr Cox in 1831, his widow took over as mistress for the next 16 years although at the time of their marriage she was shown in records to be illiterate herself.  1878 was a significant year for the school.  At this time it passed from the control of Squire Bosville to become the First National School, and with it a requirement to have qualified teachers and a curriculum.  At this point the dominant tradition of having an unqualified male teacher changed to that of having a qualified female teacher.

 

The most important visitor ever known to have climbed the steps into the schoolroom was the Archbishop of York, who on 10th November, 1893 wrote in the school log book: “I visited the School today and catochised the children. I was much pleased with their answers.”  He was accompanied by Squire Bosvile, the Rector of Thrybergh and the Vicar of Ravenfield.

Teachers at the School

 

C1785-1800	Unknown
1800-1807	William Dean
1808	Thomas Cusens
1809-1811	William Dean
1811-1831	George Cox
1831-1847	Alice Cox (George’s widow nee Revill of Wickersley)
1847-1849	Michael T Bedford
1849-1850	Henry Jones
1850-1858	Samuel A Rayner
1858-1860	George Ramsden
1860--1878	Thomas E Atkinson
1878-1881	Mary Beldon
1881-1884	Louise Fidler
1884-1887	Edith M Wilkinson
1887-1888	Jane Preston
1888-1890	Fanny Dodd
1890-1892	Kate Village
1892-1894	Martha H Butterworth
1894-1897	Helen Webster
1897-1909	Harriet Carr

 

 

 

 The vehicular entrance to the Old School House still retains the stone gate posts with the foot pads, designed to prevent carts and cartwheels from striking the posts.