On this day in Wembury — 14 July 1887

On this date, Mr. J. U. Stevens of Down Thomas, clerk to the Wembury School Board, issued a formal notice announcing the search for a new schoolmaster and mistress to take charge of the Wembury Board School at Michaelmas. The advertisement, later printed in the Western Morning News on 20 July, offers a fascinating snapshot of how village education was staffed and funded in Victorian Devon.

The Board sought either a married couple or a brother and sister, the woman to take charge of the infant department and to teach sewing, while the man oversaw the older pupils. The school’s average attendance was 80, and the post included a residence and free coal. Applicants were asked to submit ages, desired joint salary, and testimonials by 26 July.

The notice recorded that the annual government grants for the previous three years had been £35, £51, and £31. These figures reflected inspection results and attendance rates, which determined how much the Education Department paid the parish. In practice, this meant that Wembury’s teachers likely earned around £80 to £90 a year combined, modest by urban standards but typical for rural Devon.

At the time, the Board School system, created under the Education Act of 1870, was only a generation old. Teachers lived on site, managed every class from infants to early teens, and often doubled as caretakers, clerks, and community leaders.

Mr. Stevens’s advertisement captures both the ambition and the economy of late-Victorian village schooling—an era when Wembury’s education was literally run from a kitchen table in the schoolhouse, lit by oil lamps and warmed by the coal that came with the job.

(Source: Western Morning News, 20 July 1887 — “Wembury School Board.”)