Hebden School Registers

Education in Hebden in the early nineteen century was rudimentary, to say the least, being conducted in an old ramshackle building on Low Green that was originally built as a drying kiln for grain. Largely as the result of the 1870 Education Act which made education available to all children between the ages of five and 13 under the supervisory eye of the local education boards, a newly built Hebden School was opened in 1874. One of the provisions of the Act was that registers should be maintained that recorded details of the children that attended. The following is a transcript of the Hebden School register between 1874 and 1919. It is worth noting that many non-conformists chose not to send their children to the Church of England school.

For much of the period covered by these admissions the schoolmaster was William John Mason (1854-1943), who came from Banbury in Oxfordshire. He was was probably appointed as the first master in the new school. In 1886 he married Eden Harker who originated from Scotland, and was probably the assistant teacher. They lived in Belmont House, and he was a prominent member of the community before leaving to become headmaster of Burnsall Grammar School in 1901. Mason was replaced by Fred Senior (1853-1929) who stayed four years between posts at Cracoe and Chillingham schools. He, in turn, was succeeded in 1905 by Miss Jane Dawson (1849-1929). She lived at High Dene with her niece Violet who for some time was employed as a teaching assistant at the school. Jane Dawson retired at the age of 65 in 1915, and was succeeded by Miss Gill at a salary of £90 per annum, with the continuing support of Violet.

Those entries in the Notes column referring to a student's other registrations have been constructed from data in the original document. All other notes have been directly transcribed from the original document. Editorial 'footnotes' have been added to fields where necessary. These are indicated by the data being displayed in blue - hovering the cursor above the field will display the footnote. Note that after 1907 a separate register was maintained for infants, the first entry of which also started with "1". To differentiate between the two registers, the transcriber has added a thousand to the infant registry number so the first entry appears as "1001". When the infant transferred to the main school, a corresponding entry appears in the main register. The two entries have been cross-referenced using title notes on the registration number.

The table may be sorted by any column by clicking on the required column header. Note that to allow sorting to take place, the date 00/00/0000 is given where a date is not supplied, and if part of a date is missing, zeros are substituted for the missing sections(s). Such dates are annotated with a 'footnote'.