Coverdale Parish »
Carlton Church and School - The Early Years
The Church of England Chapel of Ease in Carlton is a modest building. The crosses on the gables bear witness to its function as a church and the barrier in front of one of the gates provides a clue to the fact that this building also served as a school until the 1970s.
The original Chapel of Ease and school was constructed in 1835 and consisted of the part of the current building adjacent and parallel to the road There may originally have been only one room: the building seems to have been intended from the first to serve as a school during the week and as a church on Sundays. Why was a Church of England chapel and school needed in Carlton in the 1830s? How might even the relatively modest expense of construction be justified? The mother church at Coverham and the existing Chapel of Ease and school in Horsehouse would all have seemed accessible from Carlton.
The answers to these questions may lie in the fact that there were severe problems facing the Church of England at a national level in the early part of the 19th century and these problems were reflected locally in Coverham parish. Church of England bishops were often unable to provide leadership and discipline in the church. Their dioceses were large and often heavily populated. Also, many priests were not very conscientious and did not always live in their parishes. The Anglican Church was often perceived as only serving the rich. The new industrial towns in the north of England had few churches or church schools and the nonconformist churches, e.g., Methodists and Baptists, were providing more and more for the religious needs of ordinary people. In the 1830s the parish of Coverham was looked after by a curate (Reverend J.H.Dalton) because the vicar, Reverend William Cuthbert, had permission to reside elsewhere on account of his wife’s ill health. The ordinary people of Coverdale could not have felt particularly welcome in Coverham Church or in Horsehouse Chapel of Ease because all the pews in these two churches were taken by those individuals or families who could afford the pew rent. There were no free pews available for those unable to pay. A Wesleyan Chapel was built in 1828 in Horsehouse and another in Carlton in 1836, perhaps partly in response to this situation and the attitude of the Anglican Churchgoers. The power and influence of the nonconformists in Coverdale was evident when the new Bishop of Ripon discovered in 1837 that the trustees of the Chapel of Ease at Horsehouse were ‘all Methodists’ and that the ‘schoolroom used as a meeting house for Ranters on Sunday!’
One of the responses of the Church of England to some of the problems in the north of England was to create a new bishopric, that of Ripon , in 1837 – the first since the Reformation. In Coverham, the response seems to have been to build a Chapel of Ease and school at Carlton, the largest village in Coverdale, to increase the influence and knowledge of the doctrines of the Church of England in the dale.
In January 1835, the Revered J.H. Dalton wrote to the landowners in Coverdale to ask for financial support for the building of a Chapel of Ease and ‘commodius’ (sic) school house in the vicinity of Carlton’. He expressed clearly two main concerns. The parish church was in an inconvenient position for three-quarters of the population of Coverdale and the state of education in the parish was ‘neglected’. His plea for funds was supported by some powerful local trustees, principally James Ewbank and Lupton Topham of Middleham, Richard Other and J.Barnes. The trustees of the school were keen that the new school should succeed and not only did they proceed speedily to erect the building but they also applied for one of the education grants which had very recently (1834) become available from HM Treasury. £55 of government money was received in March 1836. How successful the school really was in its very early years is difficult to judge. The new bishop of Ripon, Bishop Longley, reported in his Visitation note book that there were 63 children attending the day school in Carlton in 1841 and 30 attending the Sunday School. The day school children may have been taught by a schoolmaster named George Ward, aged 20, who was living in Carlton at the time of the 1841 census. For such a young man, he had a hard task.
A clearer picture of the school emerges from the inspection report compiled in 1845 by Reverend Frederick Watkins on behalf of the newly created Committee of Council on Education. He visited the school on June 9th 1845 and found a school in which boys and girls (probably between the ages of about 5-13) were receiving instruction. The school building was described as constructed of stone and grey slate and as being in ‘tolerable’ repair. The whole site was enclosed by a stone wall. The school room (‘half of it used as a chapel’) did have a fireplace but the ventilation was said to be as bad as the ‘drainage’. There was, however, a ‘convenience’ available for the children’s, and presumably the master’s, use. Compared with the conditions in some other schools visited by Rev. Watkins, where there were no heating or toilet facilities, Coverdale children were being taught in relative comfort!
What did they learn? Mr Watkins reported that the school day began with prayers but that the curriculum was limited. Only reading and writing were taught. There was no grammar, arithmetic, history or geography although these subjects were usually taught in other church schools. The children’s progress was also described as ‘limited’. They achieved only average levels of performance in reading (described as ‘fair’) and were below average in writing (‘moderate’). The ‘tone’ of the school (perhaps its ethos to us) also left something to be desired, the inspector describing this, too, as ‘moderate’. Rev. Watkins judged that the school was ‘not flourishing’. As for the teacher, he reported that he used corporal punishment, ‘ a little stick’, once or twice a day. As well as the regular morning prayers, there was religious teaching, bible reading and church catechism twice a week. Since many of the children came from nonconformist households we might wonder what parents’ attitude was towards the teaching of Church of England beliefs to their children. Rev. Watkins’ final judgement on the school was that it was ‘a poor school under disadvantageous circumstances and discouraging to the master’.
Poor George Ward, if indeed he was the teacher, may have been defeated by his task or the trustees may have realised that they needed a more experienced schoolmaster. Certainly, by 1851, the school seems to have been in the care of the much older Anthony Wharton, aged 51. He was living in Carlton with his wife, daughter and two sons at the time of the 1851 census.