My ‘Victorian’ Schoolroom

Posted on | July 23, 2008 | 4 Comments

Jan and I visited Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire while we were wandering England for a couple of weeks recently. It’s a fine old building, and some of its rooms were used in the BBC’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice from a few years ago, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. Part of the building has been given over to a Museum of Childhood, and one exhibit in the museum is a mock-up of a Victorian schoolroom.

Despite the many signs banning the taking of photographs inside the house, I did sneak a picture of the schoolroom. Why? Because that ‘Victorian’ schoolroom was pretty much identical to the classroom I sat down in in the first school I attended back in 1962 in Fauldhouse, West Lothian, here in Scotland, right down to the bench desks, the flip-over blackboard, the map of the British Empire on the wall, and the slates. I learned to ‘form my letters’ (I think that was the phrase that was used) on a slate!

Victorian? How dare they!

Category: education, personal

Comments

4 Responses to “My ‘Victorian’ Schoolroom”

David Gilmour
July 25th, 2008 @ 5:01 pm

The paired desks with fixed seats, flip-top lids and inkwells, and the lectern, look familiar to me too from around the same time in Ayrshire. At least I don’t remember slates and dip pens, but it must have been a close thing.
John Connell
July 25th, 2008 @ 11:59 pm

Hey – the school I went to was advanced technologically – we had biros, not dipped pens!
jaye richards
July 26th, 2008 @ 3:17 pm

Biro’s !! we were not allowed to use them at all. We had to use fountain pens only as biro’s were thought to look cheap and did not encourage quality in our work – and every ink blot resulted in a ruler applied to the back of the hand…

Those were the days indeed.
Ruby
July 31st, 2008 @ 12:00 pm

hey – I recognise that room too (except for the slates)!