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The
types of school available in the first half of the Victorian period
(1840-70) reflected the differences within English society associated with
social class, and religion ‑ and the points at which the two met. Bramham
was an excellent example.
At this
time Bramham had four schools ‑ one at Bramham College, run by Dr Haigh, for
the sons of gentlefolk anti another, less prestigious because it catered for
girls, at Tenter Hill Lodge (now Canton House) run by the vicar's daughter,
Miss Mary Ann Bownas. A third, for the aspiring classes, and associated with
the Parish Church, was the National School, so called because it was run
under the auspices of the National Society for the Education of the Poor in
the Principles of the Established Church. Its great rival was the Free
School, run by the British and Foreign
Schools
Society ‑ the organ of the Free or Nonconformist churches, of which there
were two in Bramham, the Wesleyans who were predominantly middle‑class, and
the Primitive Methodists, who were working‑class.
Interestingly, the superior boys of Bramham College were marched on Sunday
mornings to either the Parish Church, or the Wesleyan Chapel in Bramham or
the Congregational Church in Boston Spa.
As neither
Bramham College nor Miss Bownas's School for Young Ladies outlived their
proprietors, and the Government intervened to introduce state elementary
education in 1870, there remained only one school in Bramham after that
date, the forerunner of the local junior and infant school of today.
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