The Victorians
Langar Church of England School
Go back to The Victorians. See also Victorian Lords of the Manor and the Butler family.
There was a day school in Langar from 1829 with 4 boys and 7 girls. Their education was paid for by parents or friends. There was also a Sunday school which opened in 1833 with 12 boys ad 12 girls whose books were paid for by Francis Wright. It is not known where the schools were held – they may have been in the church.
(The population of Langar and Barnstone at this time was 274.)
A new school was set up in 1842 through the efforts of Rev Thomas Butler, who became rector of Langar in 1834, with the support of the Wright family, lords of the manor. Francis Wright gave a piece of land known as the Rickyard Garden for the school to be built.
The first schoolmistress was Miss Farhead, who lived in the house next to the school. The Rev Butler taught lessons on the Bible, mathematics and geography; his daughter Mary taught sewing, listened to children read and played the piano for hymn singing.
The old badge shows the school of 1842 with the church behind →
Children had to pay one penny a week to come to school. That does not sound much, but if a farm worker had 3 or 4 children, school attendance cost as much a pound of cheese, one of the staple Victorian foods for poor people. If you earned only 15 shillings a week and your rent cost 2 shillings, 4 pence was quite a lot of money.
The first toilets were built in 1900, electricity came in 1935 and mains water in 1948 - a well in the girls’ playground had been the only water supply before that.
The Second World War
See also The Second World War.
On 1st September 1939, when German troops invaded Poland and Britain, France declared war on Germany - World War 2 had begun.
Evacuees
The British government expected the Germans to send planes to drop bombs on Britain’s industrial cities and they began to evacuate children to the countryside to keep them safe. Evacuations began in September 1939. Children who were evacuated were known as evacuees and the families they stayed with in the countryside were called host families.
Children went with others from their school on special trains from the cities to their host families. Many thought they were going on a holiday. Evacuees were all given a gas mask and food for the journey to the countryside. Every child had a label pinned to their clothing stating their name, home address, school and destination. Efforts were made to keep brothers and sisters together, but this was not always possible.
It was not just children who were evacuated. Mothers of very young children, pregnant women, disabled people and some teachers were evacuated. The evacuated teachers stayed in the same village as their evacuated classes and taught their own children at the country school. It is estimated that over 3 million people (mostly children) were evacuated during World War 2.
Evacuees in Langar
Langar School’s Admissions Register shows that on Wednesday 13 September 1939 26 children came from Nottingham to stay in Langar and Barnstone - 16 from Queen’s Walk School, 8 from Trent Bridge School and 2 from Bosworth Road School. The oldest child was a boy aged 14, while the youngest was a 5 year old girl. The addresses where the children stayed are not shown in the Admissions Register. However, almost every house in Langar and Barnstone must have been host to an evacuee.
The Phoney War
‘Phoney War’ is the name given to the time at the beginning of World War Two from September 1939 to April 1940. After the attack on Poland, it seemed that nothing was happening. Many of the children who were evacuated in September 1939 returned home by 1940 because Britain was not heavily bombed by the Germans at the beginning of the war.
The first children to leave Langar to go back home to Nottingham were two brothers aged 9 and 11. They stayed in Langar for only two weeks. Most of the other evacuees had gone back home before Christmas 1939 with only a few children staying into 1940.
More evacuees
In 1941 more evacuees began to arrive at Langar School. There were 15 children from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. 25 children came from St Mary's Hospital School (not a hospital in the modern sense); others came from Northgate School and the village of Runham. Great Yarmouth is a seaport on the east coast of England which lay underneath the flight path of many of the bombers coming from Germany. There were also evacuees from Aberdeen in Scotland, Essex, Nottingham and South Wales. The school's Admission Register gives the names and addresses of all the host families - almost everyone in Langar and Barnstone was host to an evacuee. Two children stayed at Langar Hall and five were taken in by the Rector of Langar at the Rectory.
The war in Europe ended on 8 May 1945, but the airfield was still in use. The Royal Canadian Air Force used Langar after the war as a base until 1963. Langar airfield was used as a supply depot handling spares for F-86 Sabre aircraft. Over 50 Canadian children attended Langar School in the years after the war up to 1961.
See also The Second World War.
After the War
Langar School was for children of all ages: infants, juniors and seniors. But after 1954 secondary age pupils attended school in Bingham or elsewhere, leaving Langar School as a primary school.
By the 1970s the school was unsuitable for the number of children - new houses had been built in the village. A new two-classroom building was opened on Barnstone Road in 1976. The old school remained in use up until 2008 when the Barnstone Road site was extended to make a single site for pre-school and primary children.
The old school was sold at auction in 2009 to private individuals who renovated the building as a 5-bedroom house.
Outstanding!
In November 2017 a reception was held at Nottinghamshire County Hall to celebrate the schools rated as outstanding by Ofsted inspectors.
The photograph shows Langar CofE Primary School head of school, Emily Brown (left) and the chair of governors, Dr Helen Baxter (right) with chairman of Nottinghamshire County Council’s Children and Young People Committee, Councillor Philip Owen (centre).
For more on the Rector, Rev Thomas Butler, click here. For more on the Wrights, lords of the manor, click here.