This film is one of a sizeable collection of films made by amateur filmmaker Roger Hateley from Driffield in East Riding.   The films cover a period from 1970 to 1983, featuring the places and events where Roger lived; in Waltham, just outside Grimsby, and at Walkington, near Beverley in the East Riding, where he moved to 1973 to take up a lecturing job teaching Chemistry Education at Hull University.  Roger took an interest in local crafts and churches: for example, he filmed boat making in...

This film is one of a sizeable collection of films made by amateur filmmaker Roger Hateley from Driffield in East Riding.   The films cover a period from 1970 to 1983, featuring the places and events where Roger lived; in Waltham, just outside Grimsby, and at Walkington, near Beverley in the East Riding, where he moved to 1973 to take up a lecturing job teaching Chemistry Education at Hull University.  Roger took an interest in local crafts and churches: for example, he filmed boat making in Beverley and the making of a hand-made cartwheel.  The interest in churches dovetailing with Roger’s continuing to sing in a local choir; the Wolds Apart West Gallery Quire, specialising in the 1662 Prayerbook.    More on Roger can be found in the Context for Grimsby Fish Dock (1973-74).

Roger still remembers some of those seen in the film: the Headmaster was Michael Brammer, the person playing the Chairman of Governors (in the top hat) was Eddie Fryer, whilst his "wife" in the film was Hilda Henderson.  At the giving out of the commemorative mugs, the Vicar was Rev Michael Burdon and the academic in the mortar board was Dr Michael Scrowston, a lecturer at Hull University (there is an amusing story about him in Hansard for 20th January 2003).  Roger’s youngest son also attended the school but left just before the film was made.

As will be gathered, the original Victorian school was founded at Northgate in 1876, then with 62 pupils, while the infant school wasn’t opened until 1973, at the Crake Wells site.  The infant and junior sections were joined together in 2000-01.  The new building, on a different site, was officially opened by then Education Secretary David Blunkett, in October 2000.  The old school buildings are now private homes.  

According to Wikipedia, the 1871 census records  659 residents of Walkington.  This was the year that the East Riding Asylum was built, nearby on Broadgate Farm on the Beverley Road.  It isn’t clear what sort of school this was when it was founded, most probably it would have been a state school, which every school district were required to provide for children aged 5 to 12 by the Elementary Education Act of 1870 (other schools being church run).  This created 2,500 new school boards, who had the discretion as to whether to make school attendance compulsory – this not being made the law until the 1880 Act.  At this time, except for the very poor, it cost one penny a week (not becoming free until the 1891 Act).

The film shows the school making a real effort to reproduce school life, in all its aspects, as it would have been a hundred years before.  There is much here that looks authentic – for an idea of what dress would have been like have a look at the Victorian School website, in References.  Lessons did revolve around the three ‘R’s’ and Bible instruction, and were mainly by rote.   Understandably, the discipline of the schools at that time is highlighted, although played down.  Elizabeth Sewell, recounting her experience earlier in the century, notes that: “The strictness of the school discipline was extreme.  Not a word was spoken in school time; and as for disobedience, it never entered our thoughts as a possibility.  Three mistakes, however trivial, in a lesson learnt by rote, were punished by another lesson.” (in Sanders, p.175).

The "dunce cap" was fairly common in Victorian schools, the term itself first appearing in Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop in 1840.  Ironically the word ‘dunce’ used was originally as a pejorative name against the brilliant medieval Scholastic John Duns Scotus and his followers, though to denote obstinacy rather than stupidity.

The practices that are shown here as typical of a Victorian school would certainly go against the, highly contentious, Code Of Conduct And Practice For Registered Teachers (2009) issued by the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE).  New standards issued by the Department of Education, to come into effect in October 2012, state that teachers are expected to treat pupils ‘with dignity’ – although there is no specific reference to teachers calling students derogatory names; and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that students still get bullied by some teachers (see The Weekly Gripe, References). 

The games too are authentic. The term folk-lore was coined by William Thoms in 1846, shortly before Walkington school was founded.  The principle example of that Thoms gave of this new field of study was, coincidently, childhood customs in Yorkshire.  Hence the growth of folk-lore as a subject and expanded education go hand-in-hand in the nineteenth century.  A more recent folklorist, Vernon Bartlett, speculates that skipping, and other jumping games, may derive from the ancient practice of farmers leaping in their fields in the hope of stimulating the growth of their seeds!  The mid and late Victorian periods saw a dazzling array of new toys and games, often developing ones that had been around for a long time. 

Although it is often said that traditional children’s games are dying out, June Factor, writing in 2001, claims that the evidence does not support this perception.  The two outstanding modern folklorists for children’s games are the husband and wife team of Iona and Peter Opie, who compiled an almost comprehensive list in 1969 (References).  ‘Almost’ as the list was compiled based on a survey from the 1950s; and this may explain the single mention of the hula-hoop, which only took off as a modern craze in the 1950s, having died out somewhat from their popularity in the 19th century – the name deriving from British sailors who had seen hula dancing in the Hawaiian Islands.  The spinning top –¬ one of the most ancient and universal toys there has ever been - was also popular in the mid-19th century, often wound with a string.  It was around this time that Foucault used the basic principle to create the gyroscope.

As for the writing on the blackboard near the end, the Museum for Childhood, helps with an explanation:  “The word ‘diller’ is a Yorkshire term for a boy who is dim-witted and stupid so this rhyme seems to be a moral lesson warning the importance of punctuality”.  In another one of their books (The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes) Iona and Peter Opie suggests that ‘a diller, a dollar’ are taken from the words dilatory and dullard, or that maybe ‘a diller, a dollar’ is related to dilly-dally.  A look at current school policies shows the emphasis now, thankfully, is more on rewards rather than punishments, and punctuality doesn’t appear to be regarded as such a major problem!

(With thanks to Roger Hateley)

References

Vernon Bartlett, The Past of Pastimes, London, Chatto & Windus, 1969.
June Factor, ‘Three Myths about children’s folklore’, in Julie Bishop and Mavis Curtis (eds.), play today in the primary school playground, Open University Press, 2001
John Lawson and Harold Silver, A social history of education in England, London, Methuen, 1973.
Martin Limon, Tales From the East Riding, Tempus Publishing
Martin Limon, More Tales From the East Riding, History Press, 2008.
Iona and Peter Opie, Children's games in street and playground. Chasing, catching, seeking, hunting, racing, duelling, exerting, daring, guessing, acting, pretending, Oxford, 1969.
Iona and Peter Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Oxford, OUP, 1951.
Valerie Sanders (ed), Records of Childhood: an Anthology of Nineteenth Century Women’s Childhoods, Ashgate, 2000.

Walkington on Wikipedia
Walkington Primary School
Walkington News
The Victorian School
The Weekly Gripe, Teachers who torment children