HISTORY OF SCHOOL AND COTTINGLEY TOWN HALL Mr. Ellis Heaton, a former resident of Cottingley, wrote the following sketch in 1914. Mr. Heaton was brought up in Cottingley early in life and showed promise of great usefulness. He was appointed Secretary of the Sunday school, but very soon afterwards had to remove from the district. The ensuing history of the Town Hall is reproduced here in its original form. INTRODUCTION England is today a nation in arms. Europe is one vast battlefield. Little Belgium is once again the arena of international strife. We are living in the midst of wars and the alarums of wars. The guns are booming out from the Priory Cliff near my house; soldiers pass to and fro beneath my window. Only a few days ago the ships of the enemy came off our coast and wrought havoc in three of our seaside towns. The year 1814 was no less a time of wars and alarms, but the end was in sight. Napoleon, who had been the scourge of Europe for a dozen years, was a prisoner in Elba, and peace seemed sure. But 1815 saw his escape from that island prison, it saw the exciting events of the Hundred Days, it saw Napoleon's overthrow and his safe lodgement in the lonely southern isle of St. Helena. Such were the times in which a few brave pioneers still holding to the Gospel of Peace and Goodwill, converted a smithy into a Sunday School, and started the work, the history of which we are to trace in these pages, and over which we rejoice today. England had been drained by the wars. She had poured out her blood and her treasure and she was exhausted. But it was all over in June 1815. Oh that we might join to our Centenary and Jubilee Celebrations, the rejoicings over a lasting peace in which "Nation with Nation, land with land, arm in arm, shall live as comrades free, in every heart and brain shall throb the pulse of one fraternity." Christmastide 1914 E.W.H. CHAPTER 1 The Smithy that became a Sunday School Anyone making a tour of the village of Cottingley today can see for himself that the Cottingley of a hundred years ago must have been a much smaller place. The old houses cluster about the foot of the village or range themselves now on this side and now on that of the Main Street, which led in those days to the Old Hall that stood at the t op of the village. There were three houses of distinction in 1815. There was the Old Hall which dated from 1659 and belonged to the Ferrands of St. Ives. This was pulled down in 1872 but we have a reminiscence of it in the "Old Hall Well". Then there was the Grange, erected in 1671, the home of the Hollings family, with its pleasant garden sloping down to the beck and looking across to the ancient hostelry known as the Sun Inn. This inn stood on the old Coach Road and near it was the Smithy, which in 1815 became the Sunday School. Cottingley Hall (then known as Cottingley House) was of more recent date than the Old Hall or the Grange, and in 1815 it was occupied by Miss Sarah Ferrand. The inn was kept by the Fosters, one of whose daughters became the wife of James Moore. The inn had a good reputation and it was here that the "musicians" mentioned in the early accounts of the Sunday School took their refreshment when they came from surrounding villages to help in the anniversary. Can we picture to ourselves the England of 1815. The population was only eleven million souls. There were more than three-quarters of a million slaves in the British Empire, though slave trading had ceased some six years before. Wilberforce was then a man of fifty-six. Leeds was a little town of 80,000 inhabitants. Travelling was by coach. There were no trains or trams or cabs. There were only two steamers in the British Empire and together their tonnage was only 456. Gas was practically unknown. A Member of Parliament got up in the House and said "You might as well talk of ventilating London with windmills as talk of lighting the streets with gas." Duelling was common. Intemperance was an everyday fault. Laws were severe. Poachers could be transported for seven years. Men could be hung for stealing a sheep. The prisons were in a dreadful state. Elizabeth Fry had paid her first visit to Newgate in 1813 and was now fully launched on her career of mercy. Women could be flogged in public places. One person in every eleven was a pauper. Only one child in four was receiving any education whatsoever. Shelley wrote - "In countries that are free such starvation cannot be as in England now we see." Children were sent to work at the age of seven, and were often made to work 16 hours out of the 24: every child has read Charles Kingsley's story of the boy chimney sweeps of those days in "Water Babies". Can we wonder that men, whose hearts were touched with the love of Christ, brooded and yearned and eventually moved in the direction of service to Christ's "little ones", and overcame every obstacle, turning the village smithy into a school house, where every child might learn to read that he might "search the scriptures" and be able to say in the words of the psalm, "Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee." It was towards the end of 1814 and in the early months of 1815 that those noble pioneer s rented the Smithy at the foot of the village from Joseph Hollings esquire, of Whetley Hall, in the parish of Bradford, and vested its management in a committee. They built better than they knew, but so careless were they of fame that they have not even left their names on record for us to honour. The school was to be conducted "on a liberal plan". There were to be no narrow tests. All who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and in truth and who therefore possessed the moral qualities such love ensures were welcomed as workers in the cause which knew no sect or party. We read in the records - "The Committee shall permit and suffer the children of parents of every denomination, sect and party to assemble in the said schoolroom for the purpose of instruction by such as shall be willing to labour gratuitously". "The said teachers shall be persons of good moral character, and shall not be objected to on account of his or her or their faith or principles." The work began as a Sunday School. This was the foundation on which they built. Parents and grown-up children had been in the habit of worshipping in the chapels and churches of Bingley, Shipley, Allerton and Wilsden. Occasional preaching services had been held in cottage houses prior to the conversion of the smithy into a school house. But now the committee took the further step of initiating "Preachings" in the village. There must have been many who could not travel to the towns and there was growing up a new generation linked to the school. What could be more wise or desirable than that they should commence preaching services in the schoolhouse. So we read the committee decided - "to permit and to suffer the said school-house to be open for the admission of preachers and ministers of all and every denomination whose lives and characters are respectable." Having secured that the right kind of person shall teach and preach the committee proceeded to make sound rules for the scholars. Here are two of them - "Any scholar, either boy or girl, heard swearing - the superintendent shall immediately have the boy or girl placed in a conspicuous part of the room for the space of ten minutes, with a piece of paper in his or her hand on which shall be written the offence." "Each scholar shall be obliged to observe due reverence towards their masters, superintendents and visitors." It is interesting to find that the committee urged superintendents candidly to put in practice the above resolutions. The earliest financial statement of which we have any record is for the year 1817, and occurs in the Sunday School "Accompt Book". The income for the year was just over £11, and there is a handsome balance at the close of £2.13.4½d. Some interesting items are - Two Dozen of Candles ... £0.16s.0d A Letter to London ... £0. 1s.0d. To the Musicians ... £0. 4s.11d. It is gratifying to find that the Ferrands and Joseph Hollings each contributed an annual gift of £1 to the funds. Both families belonged to the Anglican Communion. The earliest recorded names of workers are those of William Picard, Henry Moulden, John Hudson and J. Sugden. In 1818 we find a Thomas and a William Whitley, and in 1819, James Pollard. There is no mention of oil lamps till 1828: till then candles had served: this must have been chiefly for the preaching services, since the school meetings would generally be in daylight. A regularly recurring item of expenditure is - To "Whitewashing" the school, 2/6. By the year 1831 the school seems to have been thoroughly established and henceforth we find a complete record of its doings. From the Minutes of April 12th of that year we gather that "All teachers are expected to be in attendance ten minutes before school time".