Day School, Brokenborough

A day school was started in the parish in 1825 and by 1833 there were 17 boys and 5 girls attending. The Elizabeth Hodges educational charity gave an annual grant of £2 for three boys to be taught. In 1858 between 20 and 30 children were taught in a cottage kitchen by an elderly villager and his wife; Lord Suffolk provided the cottage and the £2 from the charity provided education for four boys. By 1871 the school was attended by 12 boys and 21 girls and in 1875 Miss Prudence Pitt was schoolmistress. On the large scale Ordnance Survey map of 1889 there are two buildings marked as schools. On the north-western side of the triangular Green there is one marked for ‘Boys & Girls’, while another simply named as ‘School’ is in a slightly isolated position at the end of a short lane from the south-western corner of the Green, but closer to the church. Whether both schools were in use at the same time is unknown.

A dame school for small children was said to continue in a room adjoining the post and received the £2 from the Hodges charity. However the contemporary Kelly’s Directories that this was in a school built to accommodate 40 children. In 1885 Mrs Ann Pincott was schoolmistress with an average of 25 children attending; by 1895 Miss Alice E. Gladwin had taken over. Average attendance was 27 in 1895 and 1900, 20 in 1907, and 18 in 1911. From 1915 the attendance is not given but it is likely to have continued declining. The last time the school is listed is in 1927 when Alice Gladwin was still the schoolmistress. It is likely that the school closed in the late 1920s.