Amongst other useful things, the children have been taught to run along in single file and leap an obstacle; and I scoffed at this, not seeing how very useful it might be. One sunny day a worthy man was lying on the grass, flat on his back, dead drunk; and they ran along and leaped over him in single file in the way they had been taught at school, just clearing his capacious waistcoat which stood up like a dome.
The old school at Lustleigh was founded by Parson Davy in 1825; and he gave land to endow it, and set forth its objects in his deed of gift, 4 August 1825. It was “for the educating and instructing of the poor children, being parishioners of the said parish, on the principles of the established Church of England, in reading and needlework, in learning their catechism, and in such other proper and useful learning for poor children as is hereinafter directed and appointed,” namely, “teaching the boys reading and spelling, and the girls reading and spelling and knitting and needlework, and also instructing such poor children in such other proper and useful learning as the majority of the feoffees shall think proper and direct,” the feoffees being the eight persons whom he thereby enfeoffed of the land as trustees.
Within my recollection there used to be a dozen children at the school, or sometimes a few more. The endowment was not large enough to make it a free school, and there were fees to pay. If parents could not manage it, there were always people who would pay the fees for any promising child; and thus admission to the school was rather like admission to the Navy now that competitive examination has been replaced by interview. It was, of course, a mixed school, boys and girls together. They were taught Scripture by the Rector and other subjects by a Dame; and the Dame enforced her teaching with a stick. And she (or her predecessor) lived in the old school-house itself, a building with four rooms.
Then came the Education Act of 1870, and the old school-room was not thought nearly good enough for elementary teaching then, though it was just about as good as some of those old rooms at Harrow in which much better work was done. A new building was erected a little higher up the hill, and the old Dame and her pupils moved up there at the end of 1876. The old school was shut up, and its endowment is now frittered away in prizes at the new school and a Sunday school. I always wish the old school had been kept alive as a nucleus for a secondary school here. The endowment seemed too small: yet Harrow began with very little more--“our House was built in lowly ways, God brought us to great honour.”