On this day in Wembury — 25 May 1894

The Western Morning News announced that Mr. J. Teare Harry, who had served as master of Wembury Board School for the past seven years, had been appointed headmaster of the Boys’ Board School at Tywardreath, Cornwall. His promotion reflected the growing professional mobility within England’s new state-funded education system.

At that time, Wembury’s Board School—founded under the Education Act of 1870—was among the first generation of schools providing compulsory elementary education for local children. The Act required every district to form a School Board to ensure that all children received schooling up to the age of ten (later twelve). Before this, most Wembury children had attended small church-run classes in the old parish room near St Werburgh’s or were taught informally at home.

Under Mr. Teare Harry’s stewardship in the 1880s and early 1890s, the Wembury Board School developed a good reputation. Pupils were examined annually by His Majesty’s Inspectors, who assessed reading, writing, arithmetic, and religious instruction—the results determining how much grant money the parish received. Attendance records from similar Devon schools show absences spiking during haymaking and potato planting, but Wembury’s results were described as “steady and satisfactory.”

The school building, likely a single-room stone structure with a divided hall and adjoining teacher’s house, stood near the centre of the village, serving children from Wembury, Knighton, and Down Thomas. Mr. Teare Harry, like most rural masters of his day, not only taught all age groups but also handled administration, discipline, firewood orders, and even maintenance.

His move to Tywardreath—a larger and more urbanised Cornish parish—was both a personal advancement and a sign of the times, as trained schoolmasters became increasingly sought after in the expanding national education network.

(Source: Western Morning News, 25 May 1894 — “Wembury: Appointment of Mr. J. Teare Harry.”)