Writing in 1958, Ella Way Hookey describes how in the 1880s:

An infants’ room was added and sanitation improved.  Children walked to school – some a distance of two or three miles – bringing their dinner.  They started school at three years of age and the number of children on the register was ninety to a hundred.  The school mistress was Miss Hollis and she had two assistants.  She stayed there until her retirement and lived on to a great age in Hulverstone.

 The description of special occasions and outings, such as blackberrying, sound idyllic from a distance but we know that many of the children had inadequate shoes to walk the long way to school.