Time off for mushroom picking and going to the fair, earth closets for toilets and no electricity. Life was very different for the first pupils at a Welsh village school celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
A scan down the log books of Bancyfelin School in Carmarthenshire shows it had no electricity until 1949, no canteen until 1967 and earth closet toilets until 1955. Children, at what is now a proudly Welsh medium school, were also told to speak English until 1903.
Life at the tiny school has changed beyond recognition since it opened in 1872. But one thing that has not changed is that it was and remains at the heart of village life and history, said headteacher Trefina Jones.
Read more: Ten more schools to move to Welsh language education in Carmarthenshire
Trefina, who began her career at the 62-pupil school as a newly qualified teacher in 1987, left and came back as head in 2016, has a long family connection to it. Her husband Eirian is a past pupil and their grown up sons were the fourth generation of his family to attend.
Bancyfelin, which opened two years after the 1870 Education Act made primary school attendance compulsory, has seen generations of children come and go, welcomed evacuees during World War Two and boasts an alumni including current Welsh rugby union players Jonathan and James Davies, and former internationals Mike Phillips and Delme Thomas.
Trefina is all too aware that the future of small rural schools is under threat, but said her primary, part of a federation of three schools, is a vibrant and important part of Welsh life in 2022 That’s partly why she decided to write a history of the Bancyfelin School to the present day with help from local historian Bruce Wallace.
“Village schools are very important because it’s important to teach children in their area. Once a village school closes the whole area is quieter, things are not the same and young families move away,” said Trefina, who has lived in the village for 27 years.
“Family is part of the school - we have generations of families who have come here and still do. We have a family ethos, it is a very homely and being such a small school everyone gets to do everything.”
While Covid has caused absence across Wales in 2022, some reasons given for not attending in the 1880s show how country life has changed. The school log book lists mushroom gathering, potato picking, and hay harvest as reasons for children being away.
Numbers also fell when it rained because children walked in from long distances and didn’t have waterproof coats. Scarlet fever, measles, mumps, chicken pox and flu were among illnesses going around a century before Covid hit.
Children would also skip lessons to go to the visiting fair to St Clears until the school board decided around 1900 to shut every year on fair day. Attending point to point meetings was also given as a reason for missing classes.
In 2022 Bancyfelin is a Welsh medium school, but when it opened, the children, who spoke Welsh, were told to speak English. The school log records that in 1885 Mr I Lloyd, attendance officer, addressed pupils “on the importance of talking English to each other while at play”. That all changed in 1903 when the Balfour Education Act handed responsibility for running schools from school boards to councils.
On December 22 1903, four days after Bancyfelin headteacher David Rowlands addressed pupils on “the importance of knowing English” the County Council Education Committee wrote to him saying it had passed a resolution “that the teaching of the Welsh language be made compulsory in each council school”.
The school records also give a glimpse into weather patterns and how they affected the community. With a drought declared in some parts of Wales this month Gwilym Davies, headteacher in 1959 wrote in the school log how it had not rained between May and October that year.
On September 1 he wrote: “Springs and wells have dried up. The upper village pump , which has not been used for many years, has been brought into use. William Thomas, a retired railwayman, is carrying 29 buckets of water to the school every day.”
The log book also shows parents have always complained - one wanted compensation for their child losing a tooth in the playground in 1916 - and how children have always pushed boundaries. One pupil at the school just before 1941 shared this memory for Trefina’s book about why he and his accomplices were caned: “We had been trying to blow the lid off from a cocoa tin using carbide and water. We did not succeed, but the punishment was not reduced.”
Perhaps in 2022, with pupils using all the latest technology that type of experiment might be explained in lessons. And corporal punishment has long gone.
With another school year about to begin and the new curriculum for Wales being launched, Trefina hopes her book helps show how vital village schools are for the future of rural communities.
While the history is interesting her book also details how pupils have gone on to jobs locally and across the world and how they have spread their wings with the help of what they learned in a tiny village school.
“It is important to keep history alive, especially with small schools closing in some parts of Wales. Bancyfelin School has always been the heart of the village and still is. she said.”
* Hanes Ysgol Bancyfelin/A History of Bancyfelin School 1872-1922 is published by Crown House Publishing Ltd
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