EDUCATION. There was evidently no school in Minster Lovell in 1819, when the poor were said to want their children to be educated.¹ In 1835 a private school taught 20 children, paid for by their parents,² and a Sunday school had 60 pupils in 1854.³ In 1868 there were 2 dame schools, each with around 12 children under 7 years of age, and a school for about 12 older boys who each paid 6d. a week, but there was thought

Charterville: the former school

to be need for a cheaper school in a central position. Feargus O'Connor had built a school in Charterville, though inhabitants allegedly thought it inadequate.⁴

Around 1871 a National school with accommodation for 94 was built in Little Minster, designed, in Gothic style, by William Wilkinson.⁵ Lady Taunton gave the site as lady of the manor, the building cost met by subscription and by a government grant.⁶ In 1875--6 accommodation was for 118 and average attendance was 77, the annual grant being £60 18s.⁷ The school was enlarged to accommodate 140 children in 1899, and 145 in 1906.⁸ In 1902 Joseph Abraham of Ringwood Farm, a Baptist not legally eligible to serve as a school manager, nevertheless acted as such, and was the most generous subscriber to the school; without his support a School Board would have been inevitable.⁹ The school was allegedly overstaffed, with enough teachers for 185 children, although the roll in 1902 was only 79.¹⁰

Minster Lovell: National school (1871)

Numbers on the school roll fluctuated throughout the 20th century, from 110 in 1954 to only 71 in 1962. A new school building in Wenrisc Drive, in the newer part of the village, was opened in 1968, and the school had 131 pupils in 1970, falling to 71 by 1993; it remained open in 2001. The old building was sold in 1979.¹¹