School

A School Board of 5 members was formed in 1879

John Toull was clerk to the board and the attendance officer

The School builing was erected in 1879 at a cost of £700.00

The village School had 108 children on the register, the average attendance was 90.

In 1890

William Thomas Earle was the Headmaster of the School

An Infant School for 30 was also formed, the average attendance was 12

Mrs Elizabeth Payne was Headmistress

My memories of Northrepps Primary School

April 1947 to July 1953 by Ann Dunning

For my first term at the school Mr Freeman was still Head Master, as he had been since about 1918 - he had also been Head when my mother (Payne) attended from 1927 to 1928.

My Infant teacher was Miss Mills - an unqualified teacher who had to leave after about a year. When Mr Freeman retired, the Junior teacher, Dorothy Gregory was promoted to his position and Miss Clarke arrived to take the Middle class.

In my early years there, pupils who had not passed the 11 plus exam, stayed on until they left school at 15, but in 1949 Cromer Secondary Modern opened and the numbers dropped to less than fifty, but we still had three teachers.

Initially, those who live too far from the school (as I did, at Hungry Hill) or didn’t have relatives to go to, took packed lunches. After about a year we started to have cooked lunches, brought from Southrepps school. Two mothers of the pupils - Mrs Gray (Albert’s mother) and Mrs Chapman (Billy’s mother) served out our meals.

The school caretaker was another mother - Mrs Gertie Risebrow. Toilets then were bucket variety at the road end of the back playgrounds.

We did P.E. in the front playground, especially after Miss Clarke joined the staff, and used the football field too (when the first village hall was built it was opposite the present one, so the field play area was larger.)

Mrs Gregory was very musical and we began to take part in the Annual Cromer Festival of Music and Drama in a choir, group choral speaking, individual verse speaking and recorder playing. Initially, we had a peripatetic recorder teacher, who came one afternoon a week. In 1952 (see newspaper cutting), we also entered the Drama Competition with “Topsy”, in which I played her - we won 1st prize beating Cromer School’s “Alice in Wonderland” and repeated our performance at the Winners Concert on Cromer Pier on the Saturday night.

Miss Clarke was artistic and taught Art to the Junior boys while Mrs Gregory taught the girls knitting and needlework. I was insulted at having to knit a string dishcloth, as I could already knit dolls clothes, having been taught by my mother.

When we learned to write in the Infant class, we used chalk on small blackboards, then progressed to pencil and paper and finally to “dip in” pens. Most of us finished our time at Northrepps writing in “good hand” - my cousin Janet Payne won a national handwriting competition in the Children’s Newspaper.

The older children did gardening - the boys grew vegetables in the garden facing east, while the girls grew flowers in beds around the front playground.

The then Rector, Rev. Blyth regularly came into school to give Scripture talks.

Unlike today, when the top primary classes visit their Secondary School for initiation days, we did not. However, for those going on to Cromer Secondary Modern, they did at least visit the school for a Dance Festival. We learned the country dances at Northrepps then met with our peers from the other schools there for an afternoon.

During our last year at Northrepps, a lot of emphasis was put on practice for the 11+ exam - in England, arithmetic and “Intelligence Tests”. Eunice Wright and I passed both parts - in previous years, the second part had involved an interview with the Head Teacher of either the Paston Boys Grammar School or the Girls High School. We went “blind” to the latter in September 1953, on the train from Cromer, although our mothers had previously been to the school to sign papers saying we would stay on until we were 16, as normal school leaving age was then 15.