Parliament Sets Up A Commission
Before the age of State education schools up and down the country were organized locally on a similar basis to the Old Fulwood School. By the 1830s this was widely felt to be insufficient. Trustees often were very lax in attending to their duties and it was not unknown for some of the more unscrupulous ones to divert some of the income from the endowment into their own pockets. A commission was therefore set up to investigate and report on all schools. There follows a summary of what was said about Fulwood School in 1840.
By Indenture dated 31st July 1783 reciting that John Fox in or about 1720 had given and bequeathed £150 for the maintenance of a school master to teach children to read and write in the newly erected school in Fulwood and that William Ronksley Gave £30 for the use of a school in Fulwood for which 4 children of the poorer sort should be taught to read English only to be chosen out of Fulwood by Humphrey Wardley and John Wardley (otherwise Ronksley …. And that Mary Ronksley and others had given £35 for the use of the school and that the said several sums amounting together to £215 had been placed out at interest and the interest applied towards the support of a master of the said school and that Humphrey Wardsley as surviving Trustee for the school had appointed William Woodhouse and three others to be joint Trustees with him in the management of the school and that they …. had agreed with Benjamin Hall for the purchase of a messuage …. Wadefield House near Stannington and 5 closes known as the Crofts in Stannington together with the Four Wade Fields containing 4 acres or thereabouts for the sum of £240 towards payment for which the sum of £215 was intended to be applied and £30 … borrowed to make up the purchase-money and defray the expenses of the purchase. In consideration Benjamin Hall (and his mortgagee) conveyed to John Wardley and Five other persons chosen by the major part of the inhabitants of Fulwood as trustees for the management of the school ….. and … out of the rents and profits to discharge the sum of £30 with interest and to apply a competent part of the rents and profits for the support of a master in the said school for regularly teaching 18 poor children of the township of Fulwood and Hallam to read and write English provided that the trustees should retain sufficient part of the rents for keeping the school in repair; and it was declared that the school-house and premises in Fulwood should be always used as a public school wherein the poor children should be taught under such regulations as the trustees should appoint and that when all the trustees except three should be dead the survivors should elect out of the inhabitants of Fulwood two new trustees to make up the number of 5 and should convey the said messuage …. together with the interest in the school house in Fulwood to ….. themselves and the new-chosen trustees.
Of the trustees appointed by the above deed Mr J Fox is the only survivor five new trustees however were elected some time ago by the old trustees then living, but the premises have not been conveyed to themselves and the new-chosen trustees as they ought to have been.
The property mentioned in the deed is held by Matthew Lowe as yearly tenant at the annual rent of £13 13s which appears to be somewhat below the present actual value.
The school is kept in a schoolhouse at Fulwood which is repaired at the expense of that township and the master who receives the whole of the rent as his salary teaches 18 poor children appointed by the trustees to read and such of them as are fit to write, and he teaches other scholars at the charge of their parents …
It therefore seems that, by and large, the school was being run adequately in the late 1830s. This did not last long. Around twenty years later, in 1858, there was a lot of dissatisfaction in the valley about the ‘lamentable’ state of the school. John Marshall from Fulwood Hall had raised questions of an election candidate in 1852 about the quality of education in the valley.