I know that the Yorkshire-born Charles Henry Southerns was FC Comfort's Deputy Principal from 1904 until circa 1916 (when Southerns passed away). Southerns was an Old Boy of Kingswood School, Bath, and his twin brother was Second Master (Deputy Principal) of Woodhouse Grove School, Leeds.
Also, a relative of a former pupil from the period sent me a copy of a letter from Dr Comfort to the boy's parents, extolling the virtues of Lewisham School. I've pasted in below a copy of a blog post which I wrote for the Weston Mercury 4-ish years ago which may be of interest:
Let them eat (a lot of) bread & butter…
The 1911 census is out early (at 1911census.co.uk) but boy is it expensive to view and download – almost £3.50 a page!
So it’s cost me £6.95 for Weston’s long-gone Lewisham School (to check out Deputy Head Charles Southerns plus pupils and staff) and a massive £20.85 for his twin brother’s school Woodhouse Grove in Leeds.
And annoyingly, with Woodhouse Grove there’s a whole page with only one person on it. Hugh Woods of Moseley Staffordshire, aged 15, you’ve cost me a fortune by hogging page four to yourself!
But I’ve forgiven Hugh. Woodhouse Grove’s ‘In Memorium’ 1914-18 booklet tells me that “During the British attack on Serre, July 1st 1916, Private Woods was killed by gun fire. His body was found in the third line of enemy trenches…â€
Sadly out of the 84 boys on the 1911 Woodhouse Grove census, 8 were to die in the war and at least one of the 32 Lewisham boys.
The two 1911 Lewisham census pages are completed and signed by Frederick G Comfort, the Headmaster. He’s got Charles Southerns’ place of birth wrong: Bradford instead of Richmond, North Yorks.
Clicking expensively through the Woodhouse Grove pages I was chomping at the bit to see who’d completed and signed that. But it doesn’t say. I was hoping I’d see Alfred Southerns’ signature; he was in charge while the Head was in Canada in 1911.
Anyway, I’ve done a mini-search on Ancestry.co.uk to find out a bit more about the 1911 Lewisham and Woodhouse Grove boys. As you’d expect, many of the Weston boys come from farming families whereas the Leeds boys are from textile or mining backgrounds. Both schools have a smattering of fathers who are shop-keepers, insurance agents and so on.
Ancestry.co.uk tells you if the people you’re searching for feature on living people’s family trees. And one of the Lewisham boys does – Henry Cotton, born in 1901 into a farming family from West Bradley near Glastonbury.
Henry’s son, Allen Cotton, has sent me a copy of a letter sent from the Headmaster in August 1910 enquiring whether Henry will be joining the school as a boarder in September. He’s kindly allowed me to include excerpts from it here.
We see that the fees (including tuition, music, gym, books, stationery, library & sports club) come to £17 3s 10d per term (more expensive than Woodhouse Grove which was charging £12.67-£15 depending on age).
And that the Head is offering the Cottons a special reduction but on condition that “you will not mention to anyone the arrangement I have here proposedâ€!
Virtually half the letter is taken up with describing the food. We see that the boys have “porridge with milk and sugar on four mornings a week with tea and bread and butter and jam or golden syrup on the remaining three morningsâ€. They enjoy “ham or bacon or eggs or sausages with bread and butter†and “a piece of bread and butter at 11 o’clockâ€.
Dinner is “hot and cold jointsâ€, “sometimes soup†for an “additional courseâ€, “sometimes fish, almost always two vegetables†and “always pastry or milk puddingsâ€. Tea is “bread and butter with jam or golden syrupâ€. Supper is “bread and butter†and “some days cheeseâ€. There’s a lot of bread and butter!
There must be stacks of this kind of memorabilia hidden in homes up and down the country. And in the case of Lewisham School which closed in the 1950s, snippets like this may be the only things that remain.
There’s a website I check out now and again – an antiquarian bookshop specialising in old school magazines. But I have yet to find anything about Lewisham School. There are one or two bits and pieces in Weston Library and here on the Weston Mercury website, but nothing about the era I’m interested in, between 1910 and 1916.
Maybe I’ll come across someone else whose ancestor was a pupil of Charles Southerns at Lewisham School, Weston. Someone with school memorabilia like photos and other bits and pieces…
Or maybe someone will read this blog entry and be able to help. Fingers crossed…
