Following on from our glimpse into Victorian school life, school today seems so different to the experience of Victorian pupils. Computers, interactive white boards and televisions would certainly seem as foreign to those children as slates and dipping pens would to today’s students. However, a recent trawl through the delightful school log book collection for extracts to show teachers also found some things in common.  All the teachers agreed that whether it was bad weather, uniform, behaviour in class or the challenges of teaching maths and English, parts of school life from 140 years ago seemed very familiar.

 
Swallowcliffe Schoolchildren

Comment (0) Read More...

Whilst the snow still lay on the ground I, and a couple of volunteers, made a trip out to the east of Wiltshire, almost on the Berkshire border, to Shalbourne. Our job this time was not to look at any listed buildings, but to scrutinize a couple of barns at Ropewind Farm on the Rivar Road.
Shalbourne is a quiet village mostly filled with neat, detached houses set back on leafy lanes. The agriculturalist Jethro Tull lived here at Prosperous Farm, but Shalbourne was also briefly the home of Karl Parson, a stained glass artist who was apprenticed to Christopher Whall, a leading light in the Arts & Crafts Movement. He helped Whall to illustrate Stained Glass Work (1905) and was involved in designs for Cape Town Cathedral (1908), Pretoria (1909-10) and for many churches in the USA. He later designed some of the stained glass in St Michael’s parish church in Shalbourne.

 
Ropewind Farm

Parsons came to live in Shalbourne between 1930 and 1933, setting up a studio at Ropewind Farm where he converted a mid-18^th century 3-bay barn, adding a large, porch-like window to let in natural light on the north side. He also incorporated a small granary on rather unusual brick and timber staddles into a larger purpose-built storage building and garage, giving access directly from Rivar Road. The house he lived in adjoined the site. He was forced to return to London through ill-health in 1933 and died there the following year. 'Read more' to find out about the farm's more recent history...

Comment (0) Read More...