Figure 1.--The Rodborough Infant School was located in or near Chalford. An infant school is the term used in England for a mix of nursery school/kindergarten/early primary school. We have cabinet card class portrait taken in the early-20th century. It is not dated, but the clothing and mount style suggest ot was taken about 1905. The children look to be about 4-years old. We are not sure about 5 year olds. Some of the children look younger than 4 years of age. Perhaps readers will have a better fix on age. A few of the boys wear sailor suits and two boys wears a Fauntleroy collar. We do not see any Eton collars. The girls wear pinafores. This may be the class for the younger children at the school. We are not sure how large the school was and how many classes there were at the school. There are two teachers (perhaps a teacher and a the infant school head) and what looks like a girl helper, perhaps a kind of aprentice. The photographer was Frank Colville at the Cadiver Stydio in Chlaford.

The Rodborough Infant School was located in or near Chalford. An infant school is the term used in England for a mix of nursery school/kindergarten/early primary school. This varied over time and from school to school. Early infant schools were fee paying schools, but exceptions might be made made for poor children. After the 1870 education reforms the Government took on the financing of these schools. Education was made compulsory fof children beginnking at age 5 years, but younger children were accomodated depending on space and staffing. We are not entirely sure about the scocial ckass cmposition of the children. One source suggests tht they were a major source of child care for working-class mothers employed outside the home during he late-19th century, but we cannot yet substantiate this. We have cabinet card class portrait taken in the early-20th century. It is not dated, but thge clothing and mount style suggest it was taken about 1905 . The children look to be about 4-years old. We are not sure about 5 year olds. Some of the children look younger than 4 years of age. Perhaps readers will have a better fix on age. A few of the boys wear sailor suits and two boys wears a Fauntleroy collar. We do not see any Eton collars. The girls wear pinafores. This may be the class for the younger children at the school. We are not sure how large the school was and how many classes there were at the school. Notice that there is a wall in the playground shown in the image here (figure 1). We supect this separated the infant school children from the primary school children.

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Created: 7:12 AM 2/10/2012
Last updated: 7:12 AM 2/10/2012