Category:Education

Organised education for the masses developed considerably during the Georgian Era. The concept of schools was not alien or even new for the people of the Georgian Era, even though it was fairly uncommon, however the first decades of the eighteenth century saw the foundation of numerous "charity schools" intended to provide elementary instruction for poor children. A rather negative interpretation is that such instruction was supposed to carefully prepare pupils to start working in the inferior role that had been alloted to them by Providence. Which is why it was important to get them into habits of industry, cleanliness, respect of order and punctuality from an early age. According to one view learning to read allowed them to find these precepts in the Bible, in the Anglican catechism, and in pious works. If they also knew how to write and count, they could be taken into service all the more favourably. The avowed aim of the charity schools was therefore sometimes expressed as a need to maintain social order, to fight against juvenile delinquency and to instil work ethics.

In 1812 a National School for boys was established in Chester. In 1816 it was rehoused in a new building, on the corner of Upper Northgate Street and George Street, known as the Diocesan school. Several parishes in the city also set up their own National Schools including the one built by Christ Church in Cornwall Street in 1842. The Vicar of Christ Church was then the Rev R.D. Thomas and his Curate, who lived at Hoole Villa, was the Rev S.J. Briscoe. A Poor Law Report in 1834 (from Nassau William Senior and Sir Edwin Chadwick) told Parliament that the government should “…promote the religious and moral education of the working classes.” But it took until the Elementary Education Act of 1870 to introduce the principle of compulsory elementary education through two main categories of schools: voluntary church schools; and non-denominational Board schools. However, in 1855, Christ Church, in whose Parish the developing urban village of Hoole had been placed, received a grant from the National Society to build a Mission House in Peploe Street (later Westminster Road) to which their Boys’ Department was transferred.

The articles listed below contain further detail on the development of education in Hoole.