Schooldays in Harrogate

History Group member Paul Jennings has just published Schools and Schooldays in Nineteenth-century Harrogate. The Civic Society generously contributed to the cost of this.

It is a study of all types of school in the town, including the many private schools for boys and girls that were set up here. It looks at the schools, teachers, pupils, what and how they were taught, the school day and what happened to them after school. It has 70 illustrations.

Book Launch at Harrogate Library:

On Friday 15 May, around fifty people gathered at Harrogate Library for the launch of History Group member Paul Jennings's new book: Schools and Schooldays in Nineteenth-Century Harrogate. In a short address, Paul explained how the book grew out of his previous one on Working-Class Lives in Edwardian Harrogate, which had looked at their children's experience of school, and a realisation, from the servants who worked in them, that Harrogate was an important centre for private schools for boys and girls. The book examines the two, almost entirely separate, systems of schooling through the lenses of class, religion and gender. Paul also noted how his parents' experience of education, leaving school at fourteen and his own, moving from a state primary school, via a council scholarship to a direct-grant grammar school and then to Cambridge, had influenced his views on the subject.

He then went on to thank a range of individuals, among them several society members, who had been generous with time and information, including Alan Gould on Bilton, Anne Smith on Pannal, Terry Mike-Williams on New Park and Nigel McLea and fellow old boys of Clifton School. The Society itself generously made a contribution towards the cost of publication. The staff of Harrogate Library for all their help over many years and, not least, his family.

The book was complemented by an exhibition at the Library and a series of four public talks. It is available for £20 from local bookshops, from the publisher at www.carnegiepublishing.com (with a 10% discount) or, if preferred, direct from Paul at paul.jennings@cantab.net