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Hastingleigh and Elmsted School -

1957 Newspaper Report for Bodsham School

A model Kent school  from the outside but children at Bodsham eat meals in Vicarage Stables

Bodshams old village school was very proud when the Ministry of Education chose

photographs of its exterior to use as typical of the best type of country school.

It is now hoping that Kent Education Committee will change its mind and

decide that it can afford the £900 Pounds for a new kitchen and canteen for school

meals. Then perfect photographs could be taken from any angle.

For the present kitchen and school dining room are in the vicarage stables.

 

Mrs E Cahill the school cook turns out up to 40 perfect meals every day from

a four wick oil stove in what used to be a loose box. The dining room adjoining was a stable

for two horses. Mr TW Birch, Folkestone Divisional Education Officer outlining the schools

catering plight to his executive committee said that the difficulty was to keep the building

wind and water tight. The staff were coping heroically but the kitchen was dark and on wet

days mud was trampled in.

 

This was the most isolated school in the division and it was hardly possible to visit it in one

day from Folkestone headquarters using public transport. The dining room presents an odd

appearance from the outside as the children file across the main road from the school and

 reach the old stable half doors, which are still in place.

 

Transformation

But inside (and especially on a fine day) there has been a complete transformation. The Walls

are brightly painted; the tiny tables and chairs ?infant size- are scrupulously clean and Mrs Cahill

says she manages very well considering, on her oil stove. Starting at work at 8.30 am she has her

dinners ready by the stroke of noon and puts the last burnished pan away about 3.30pm. You

never think about its being an old stable, she said.

The village children showed manners fitting a palace not a stable, when a six foot high reporter

squeezed among them to join them at dinner on Tuesday.

 

Mr and Mrs F.D. Nancollas the only teachers in the school of 59 pupils have whatever their

difficulties, kept their tiny establishment well in the stream of the best modern education ideas.

The children show the results in every action. They were bright and friendly with the strange adult.

Ten years old boys rattled merrily on with descriptions of local farming and their hopes for the

future. They suffered from no hampering shyness, displayed no brashness.

At the end of the meal it was a five years old boy who is struggling with a speech impediment

who came up to the tall stranger in the camp and politely bore his plate to the serving hatch.

 

In the small school building there are three wash basins at varying heights for the children of

different sizes very much like the Big Bears, the Medium Bears and the Baby bears which the kiddies

used without direction after playtime. Most convincing testimony to modern methods was a

well-written letter in blue and red ink pinned to the wall from a nine-years-old girl.

She wrote from a sick bed to say she was getting well and hoped to be back soon and thanked the

headmaster for sending her some homework.