My ‘Victorian’ Schoolroom

Posted on | July 23, 2008 | 6 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

6 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)!
l james
April 26th, 2010 @ 1:57 pm

i went to sudbury last year and found the classroom really exciting but a poem stuck in my mind but cant remember it written on the blackboard that we had to recite
good better best
never let it rest
until your ….

does anyone remember this??
John Connell
April 26th, 2010 @ 3:04 pm

I think you mean this one:

Good better best
Never let it rest
Until your good is better
And your better is best