The following photographs are a small selection taken from scrapbooks and albums donated to the Bishopthorpe Community Archive by Mrs. Cath Ostle. Mrs. Ostle taught at the Archbishop of York’s C. E. Junior School, from 1968 until her retirement in 1992. Starting in 1983, she decided to photograph the many visits and events that took place at the school and, in particular, with her own classes.

During Cath’s time at the Bishopthorpe school, stimulating and adventurous projects were undertaken. Amongst the most notable were the building of a swimming pool; a large pond dug to create a nature reserve; and the construction of a science and maths area. Numerous exciting visits took place: Edinburgh, Beamish, Chatsworth in Derbyshire and Robin Hood’s Bay, to name but a few.

Cath snapped away with her camera recording all these activities. The resulting photographs reveal the happy children who passed through the school during this period and who will, no doubt, remember their school days with much affection.

The collection of scrapbooks and albums can be seen at Bishopthorpe Community Archive in the Village Hall on Monday afternoons 2.30 – 5.00pm or else by appointment.

Email Linda Haywood: historygroup@bishopthorpe.net

If you have any memories or stories of your school days spent at the Archbishop of York’s School during this period, please contact us on the email address above.

We start with a seasonal offering:

Street sellers in a scene from the Nativity play, “Little Donkey”, which was written by  Mrs. Ostle’s class.  (1990)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Nature Reserve photographed in June 1986.  Pasted in one of the scrapbooks is a school newsletter, the “Bishopthorpe Bulletin”.  In this, Ian Kettlewell wrote:

“In November 1985 the School decided to make a Nature Reserve with Mr Cantrell’s help.  One Saturday we went to help dig the pond out with a digger.  Then they put a plastic liner in so that the water would not get out.  Then we got some river water with little minnows in it.  Later we planted some flowers and trees.  Then we got some frog spawn to put in.  Now we have a lovely Nature Reserve to use and a good pond to dip in.  We have found all kinds of creatures and had great fun.” 

Mrs. Ostle was well-known for her hand-bell ringing groups.  She is seen here on the left, guiding the ringers through a performance at the Copmanthorpe Festival in July 1986.

 

 

 

 

The school swimming pool was opened in 1971 when Mr. Alan Clementson was head teacher.  Staff and parents raised the required funding (4,800GBP) over a three-year period. Cath took this photograph in September 1986. The houses in Copmanthorpe Lane can be seen in the background.

 

 

 

Cycling was taken very seriously at the school.  Lee McAdam wrote in the “Bishopthorpe Bulletin”:

“Some third and fourth years have been doing their Cycling Proficiency Test, they have been doing signs turns and how to look after their bike.  They did their test on 10th July 1987 and they all passed.  In the test was a road test and a written test.  We got a badge and a sticker for our bike.”

The children were often taken for bike rides using the new Cycle Path which skirts the village.  Officially opened in November 1987, the Path was built by Sustrans Ltd. on the old railway track running from York to Selby.

The first photograph shows Cath and her class about to leave Bishopthorpe for Selby. Cath wrote that this was a very cold, blustery day in March 1989.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Archbishop Habgood is seen here on 16 July 1990 – the day he opened the highly-praised Maths and Science area in the grounds of the school.  Dr. Habgood also unveiled a plaque in memory of former head teacher, Mr. Bill Matthews, who tragically died at Easter of the same year while training for the London Marathon.  Mr. Matthews had drawn up the original plans for the area and it was thought a great shame that he was not there to see the fruits of his labour.

 

The opening of the Maths and Science area coincided with the school winning a National Curriculum award; the maths and science area forming part of the school’s submission. Parents, staff and children had helped construct the area.  The equipment included a larger-than-life pair of scales and a pavement grid of counting squares which helped with measuring, counting and weighing skills.

Mrs. Ruth Spindler (nee Proctor) used to live in Bishopthorpe and, as a young child, attended the Archbishop of York’s School during the Second World War. She now lives in America but keeps in touch through the Bishdot website.  Ruth has kindly let us share her amusing school-day memories – when life was just a little different!

 

Archbishop of York’s School photographed in 1949.  Just out of shot on the left is where the air-raid shelter stood.

(Photograph by Robin Hill. Bishopthorpe Community Archive)

 

 

 

I went to the Archbishop of York’s CE School, Bishopthorpe, from c1942 – 1949/50, in the old brick buildings you see on the photo. In the mornings, during the war, we had to line up outside to receive our cod liver oil dose. We were also given milk every day.

During an air-raid siren, the whole school had to go to the bomb shelter on the village green across from the school and we sat in the dark with gas masks on until the all-clear. I think the whole school was packed into there – as well as the teachers – I was pretty young, maybe 5½. When we had to go there during an air-raid, it was totally black inside and smelled strongly of urine! I recall some of the boys used their gas masks to make rude noises – noises like someone going to the lavatory!!

[The brick and concrete air – raid shelter was situated where the library now stands.]

A Miss Taylor was our teacher in baby class, and if any boy misbehaved, she would smack them on the backs of their bare legs with a ruler; if girls misbehaved, she rolled up your sleeves and smacked your arms.

In baby class, we used small blackboards – some of which were too shiny for the chalk to make good marks. We also had to have a nap in the afternoon by laying our heads on our desks.

Mr. Roberts was the head master and I recall he made glue in a large pot, stirring it frequently. ‘Gaffer’ Roberts’ was quite jovial but he would give you a smack sometimes.

We had all kinds of crafts. I recall making little mats with raffia on a cardboard template. I still have my ‘duchess’ set made from pink cotton with blue bias binding; I designed my own embroidery pattern of a swan and bulrushes – one oval mat and two small round mats for the candlesticks. I also made an apron, with the available pink cotton, with green and blue. I was lucky to win some prizes – Enid Blyton books with my name inside – I think my mother tossed them out!

Also, as a child, the school requested that we pick rosehips from the hedgerows and we took our filled bags to the school and received 3d [about 1.25p] for them. They were sent to be used for rosehip syrup. On another occasion in October I think – I went with other kids to pick potatoes. Can’t remember if we got paid. Talk about child labour! It was lots of fun anyway.

Ruth Spindler

 

Ruth’s class photograph taken in 1946. She is in the middle row, fifth from the left.  Class teacher Miss Mathews is in the back row on the right.

(Photograph: Bishopthorpe Community Archive.)

Middlethorpe Hall taken from the garden by B. C. R. Dodsworth. 

(Bishopthorpe Community Archive)

 

In 1850, Middlethorpe Hall, which was built for the Barlow family, was about 150 years old. Frances Barlow was the last member of the family line. She was now a widow and had moved to one of her Dringhouses properties where she could supervise the building of St Edward the Confessor’s Church in memory of her late husband, the Reverend Edward Leigh. In 1851 she married again. Her second husband was Matthew Wilkinson who had a medical practice in Manchester. Middlethorpe Hall was once again let to tenants and for the next 30 years it became a girls’ boarding school.

Lucy and Eleanor Walker took the tenancy and opened the school. They paid a rent of £72.16s. 3d (about £72. 80p) for a half-year. This rent was payable on Lady Day (March 25th) and Michaelmas (September 29th) each year.

On the 1851 census 21 girls listed as pupils were living there. They were aged from 9 to 18. Their places of birth were other parts of Yorkshire, northern England and Scotland. Six servants also lived at the Hall. On the 1861 census, the school had expanded and now had 37 girls, one of whom was born in Algeria and another in France. Anna Johnson was now in charge of the school and there were three other teachers including Mademoiselle Laurancy who taught French. Six live-in servants and a stable boy were also there.

The census gives us very little information about the backgrounds of the girls who came to the school and their life there. Many questions are left unanswered. What subjects did they learn? French certainly seems one of them. Where were the schoolrooms, where did the children have their meals and where did they sleep? What did they do in the evenings when the shutters were closed and there was just candlelight or the light from oil lamps? Did they play games, read stories, write letters home, darn their stockings or roll their hair in rags to curl it?

In the 1870’s the numbers of children at the school decreased to 25. Anna Johnson now had four teachers to pay and there were seven servants. The rent had increased to £88. 2s. 6d (about £88. 12p) per half year. Perhaps rising costs and fewer pupils was the reason why the school closed, for in 1881 the census shows that members of the Wilkinson family, who owned the Hall, were living there.

On the census for Middlethorpe Hall for 1861 there was the following entry: Eliza Leckonby, aged 16, a kitchen maid, born in Bubwith. She was my great grandmother and I know that she could barely read and write. I wonder what she thought of the young ladies whose teenage years must have been so very different from her own?

Diana Forrester

Comment:

RosemaryC on April 27, 2013 8:49 PM

I am so pleased to see this article about Middlethorpe Hall as a school – I’ve been trying and failing to find out about exactly when it was used in this way, and who ran it.

My interest is because of my research for my book on the life of Florence Nightingale Shore, a god-daughter of Florence Nightingale who was a decorated army nurse, and later murdered on a train in 1920. FNS was distantly related to the Wilkinsons, and was at Middlethorpe Hall in 1881, according to the census – and possibly earlier, as she did go to ‘high school’ in York. Another famous nurse, Ethel Bedford Fenwick, was also a pupil at the school a little earlier.

Thank you for this extra information!

 

Middlethorpe Hall was built for the Barlow family between 1698 -1702. It was fashionable at this time for wealthy gentlemen to visit Europe on a Grand Tour, which could last several months. In 1712 Thomas Barlow and his son Francis set out on such a visit and while they were away the house was let to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Mary was famous for her looks and her wit. She was a spirited young woman and being unwilling to marry her father’s choice of husband she eloped in 1712 to marry Edward Wortley Montagu. In 1713, and now with a baby son, she was looking for a house in Yorkshire as there was no suitable house on her father-in-law’s estate near Sheffield. In August 1713 she wrote to her husband “Tis a very pretty place … I think there is nothing to be done but to send an immediate note to Mr Harrison to let him know I will be at Middlethorpe with my family Tuesday next.”

Mary was worried about her son’s health and was advised that cold baths using the water from the Piking Well on the Fulford side of the River Ouse would strengthen him. She agreed to this, but was not wholly convinced of the benefits. Mary wrote many letters and those to her husband who was in London furthering his career, showed that she missed him a great deal and longed for him to join them at Middlethorpe, but he never did. Mary left Middlethorpe in August 1714, afraid that political changes when George 1 succeeded Queen Anne to the throne would expose Middlethorpe to Jacobite “plunderers”. For safety she went to stay with the Carlisles at Castle Howard.

Later in life, Mary became a well-known writer and wrote poems about the poor treatment of women. In 1715, she suffered from smallpox but survived. In 1716 she went with her husband to the Embassy in Constantinople and while there saw people being inoculated against smallpox. On returning to England she had her son and daughter inoculated and was ridiculed as an “unnatural mother” who had gambled with her children’s lives. Mary died in 1772.

Lady Wortley Place, a group of houses at Middlethorpe, commemorates her time at the Hall.

Diana Forrester

 

On 6 February 1952, at the age of 25, Princess Elizabeth became Queen on the death of her father, King George VI.  One year later, residents of Bishopthorpe started planning to celebrate the Coronation which was to be held on 2 June 1953.

When June arrived, the villagers started a party that lasted a whole week!  They held sports events, firework displays, dances, fancy dress parades and crowned their own Carnival Queen.

Bishopthorpe resident, Elizabeth Anfield, remembers the excitement of being chosen as one of the Carnival Queen’s flower fairies.  Here she tells her story:

“I was about eight years old and feeling very proud of myself.  I had been chosen to represent my home village in the Coronation Festivities.  There had been a lot of preparations going on for many months.  I had been for an ‘interview’ in the village hall where any children who were interested in taking part had to parade on stage in front of the Committee.  It was a thrill to have been chosen.

“We then attended fittings for our costumes which had been cut out by the Village Seamstress, Phyllis Trafford.  The costumes were finished by our mothers on their Singer sewing machines.

1 June 1953: Surrounded by flower fairies, Mr. Reading crowns Carnival Queen Janet Heath outside the village hall.

“The Carnival Queen was Janet Heath. She had a magnificent dress with a red train – I was one of her attendants.  We were Flower Fairies, all dressed in different pastel colours.  I was a Violet and my dress had a full net skirt with scalloped petals around the waist.  We wore little caps with stalks on top and carried a posy of appropriate flowers to match.

“Eve Simpson was the Queen’s Special Attendant; dressed in white. She carried a cushion upon which the crown was placed until the Crowning Ceremony.  We gathered outside the village hall for photographs, with a Guard of Honour.

“We climbed on to a flat-bed lorry, which was decked out with bunting and Union Jacks, and transported to the celebrations in the field in Acaster Lane (where the shops now are, opposite the Cricket Field).

 

 

 

 

“On Saturday, 6th June, there was a Fancy Dress Parade where we paraded together again.”

With thanks to Elizabeth Hulme (nee Anfield) for her memories and Barbara Duggan (nee Judson) for her photographs.

 

Queen Victoria’s portrait taken to mark her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

 

The celebrations for this year’s Diamond Jubilee are much in evidence with promises of bonfires, fireworks and flag-waving taking place almost everywhere.  It would seem that the atmosphere was much the same in June 1897 when Queen Victoria celebrated her sixty-year reign.  Her great Jubilee procession which included troops from all over the empire, snaked its way through London, pausing for an open-air thanksgiving service outside St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Attending that service was the Archbishop of York, Dr. Maclagan, while at home in Bishopthorpe, his parishioners were enjoying their own modest celebrations.  The day started similarly with a thanksgiving service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Perhaps the vicar, Rev. Keble, reminded villagers of the occasion when, in September 1835, just two years prior to her accession, the young Princess Victoria stayed for a few days at Bishopthorpe Palace as guest of Archbishop Harcourt.  The Princess and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, arrived at the Palace escorted by the Yorkshire Hussars, no doubt watched with some excitement by many local residents.  The Princess was here to attend the Yorkshire Musical Festival.  According to her diary, Victoria did not particularly enjoy the concerts – she wasn’t a fan of Handel – but she must have enjoyed a good night’s sleep.  The Archbishop, it was reported, set about renovating the Palace for the visit and ordered two elegant state beds.   Victoria’s was covered in white velvet and her mother’s in blue.  They both laid their heads on pillows embroidered with rich Valenciennes lace.

Sixty-two years later in 1897, there were probably not many residents left who personally remembered that royal visit but, nonetheless, the inhabitants of the time were ready to celebrate Britain’s longest-reigning monarch.  Following the thanksgiving service, and in traditional Bishopthorpe-style, they set off down Acaster Lane and played a game of cricket.

The next important event was tea! Needless to say, a Diamond Jubilee Committee had been set up to organise the day’s events.  Headmaster Mr. Fred Taylor and the butcher Mr. George Scholey were in charge of the proceedings.  They ordered large quantities of food from suppliers in York: 16 loaves, a 40lb plum cake, 200 cheesecakes, 100 pork pies and a huge ham for sandwiches.  The women of the village were not to be outdone for they also ordered copious quantities of flour, lard, milk, yeast, currants and candied peel to bake buns and, appropriately enough, queen cakes.

This feast was consumed with some enthusiasm in Farmer Lofthouse’s granary but, as the villagers numbered about 400, they had to eat in two relays.  When appetites were satisfied, the children were delighted to be presented with souvenir mugs.  Once again, they returned to the cricket field where all kinds of sports were enjoyed.  Throughout the day, the band of the West Yorkshire Regiment had accompanied the fun by playing many lively pieces – but possibly not those by Handel!  The gathering concluded with three hearty cheers for Her Majesty and then joined in with a rousing chorus of the National Anthem.

Was it possible that the Queen enjoyed her Diamond Jubilee day just as much as the villagers of Bishopthorpe?

Linda Haywood

References

Yorkshire Gazette: Saturday, 5 September 1835, p3.

Yorkshire Gazette: Saturday, 26 June 1897, p3.

Borthwick Institute for Archives: BIS/34 Misc. bills, accounts & receipts.

In 2009, when the Village Hall was refurbished, the Hall Committee generously gave  Bishopthorpe Local History Group the use of a small upstairs room in which to keep its Archive.  Since that time, members of the Group have been cataloguing the collections and putting them in some order.  We are nowhere near finished as the work is very time consuming and new material continues to roll in.  However, we are keen to open the Archive to members of the public who may be interested in researching or viewing the fascinating Bishopthorpe-related collections.  After all – you never know what you might find!

What is stored in the Archive?  It is undoubtedly eclectic and exciting and reveals many unexpected facets of Bishopthorpe’s history.   A 19th century Parish Magazine notes the formation of the local football team in 1895; the deeds of one 18th century house unearths a mint-still in the grounds; Village Hall Minutes of 1916 record a war shrine erected to those serving overseas; programmes and scripts of the Bishopthorpe Players show that “am-dram” was alive and well in the village long before the Ebor Players started performing; and the York Society of Model Engineers can be seen on DVD running their miniature railway behind The Poplars (now the Social Club) in the early 1960s.

Who provided the various collections?  They were mostly given by Bishopthorpe residents, former residents and organisations. For example, the late Mr. Tom Evans of Beech Avenue was much involved with the Sports and Leisure Committee, allotment and garden committees and local youth organisations, (he was Hon. Secretary of the Bishopthorpe Youth Club in the 1960s).  More personally, he enjoyed ballroom dancing, which was once very popular in the village.  His participation in these and other activities resulted in a large and valuable collection of correspondence and ephemera which reflected his varied interests and concerns.  Tommy gave his collection to the Group specifically to preserve aspects of village history that might otherwise be forgotten.

Not quite the thing to wear for a jiving session in the Village Hall!  A dance poster from the Tommy Evans’ collection.

 

As well as these original collections, members of the Group have also collected, transcribed and digitised information on the village.  There are copies of maps; hundreds of local photographs; recorded interviews with residents; resources such as Bishopthorpe entries in trade directories and newspapers covering the 19th century to recent times.  There are digital copies of The Valuation Office Survey, 1910 – 1915, which provide descriptions of every building in the village at that time.  I should not forget that we also store copies of Link magazine from the 1970s until 2012.

The Bishopthorpe Pageant performed on the steps of the Palace in July 1954.  One of the many hundreds of photographs held in the collection. Courtesy of the Northern Echo.

 

 

 

We have sought advice from archivists at York City Archives and the Borthwick Institute who have generously given of their time and visited our room.  As a consequence, the original material is gradually being stored in archive – quality boxes and sleeves.  These are expensive so donations are always welcome and gratefully received.

I am not able to put up the complete catalogue on this website but, by clicking on the tab, ‘Archive Listings’ above, a subject list opens which gives a good idea of the Archive contents.   Throughout the list, pop-up images can be viewed of some items.  This work is ongoing and will be updated periodically.

Visitors are welcome at the Bishopthorpe Community Archive on any Monday afternoon (Bank Holiday Mondays excepted), 2.30 – 5.00 p.m.

Otherwise, telephone Linda Haywood on 01904 704584 or email this site at:

historygroup@bishopthorpe.net  to make an appointment.

Linda Haywood

Bishopthorpe Local History Group