The History of Kettlewell Village - Arthur Raistrick

School

The school in Kettlewell has a long and very interesting story.

The first school of which we have any record is the one described as a schoolhouse built by Solomon Swale on the waste of the manor, and endowed with five sheepgates on Middlesmoor, before 1660. His cousin Philip Swale, already noted as leasing the Kettlewell mines left by his will of 29th September, 1687, £5 to the poor of Kettlewell. £10 to apprentice two poor boys and

"£5 more for the benefit of the school in Kettlewell as my executors shall think most necessary."

The Vicar and eight other persons chosen by the inhabitants were to be Trustees and managers of the school.

Several pieces of land, nearly 29 acres in all, were given to the school, and the Inclosure Award of 1805 made an allotment of just over two acres in lieu of the sheepgates. The various rents were used for the school including one endowment for the education of three poor children in reading and writing.

In 1861 a committee was formed to raise money for a better qualified schoolmaster but most of the committee were Wesleyans and the Vicar found little agreement between himself and them.

In 1867 the vicar raised a separate fund to rebuild the school which was now far too small and he got enough money for the purpose. Land was bought from the Trust Lords, on the waste at another site, so as to be freed from the obligations of the original endowment. The new school was proposed by him to be a National School with the Vicar and church wardens as the Trustees and Managers. It was some years before the building was started, but before it rose far above the foundations the villagers demanded that it should be moved to the old site.

In 1875 the old school was pulled down and the new one built on the site near the junction of the Cam road and the Coverdale road, the building now used as a hostel. It was registered with the National School Society but within a year most of the villagers withdrew their support and their children so the school closed and was never reopened.

The Education Department ordered that a schoolmaster be appointed for a Kettlewell school but the two factions could not agree upon any one of the twelve candidates, so the villagers themselves appointed the one they liked, Mr. Carradice. They hired a small room in the village and had an average attendance of about 50 children.

The Department in 1883 compelled them to form a School Board and build a Board School, the building on the Starbotton road side, on which the plaque can still be seen. This is the only Board School in the upper dale, and there are in fact few others in Craven.

After the 1902 Act it became, as it still is, a County Primary School, now serving all the dale above Conistone.

The Other Britain - The Dales