THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com  created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

I have found that by the year 1906 the population of the village of Findon was around 656. It could still be called an idyllic rural community. Thomas Winton ran a shop in the Square by this time and was also the sub-postmaster and Parish Clerk. Both horse-drawn vehicles and the new motorised buses, the times of which varied according to the season of the year, provided transport for the inhabitants to Worthing.  

How times have changed.  Three ladies were slightly injured when a motor vehicle passed their horse-drawn landau in the Findon Road.   The animal was spooked and reared up.   In the process the cab overturned and threw the driver, George Baker into the roadway.   The date was 1906.  Elizabeth Bull, the schoolmistress, was now sixty years of age and the school was running in its usual efficient way. She kept a strict eye over the two schoolrooms, known as the big room and the infant room.

School Hill in Findon.

A visitor came to the school in that year and has left us with a glimpse of life at the school with the following description. It appears that they were somewhat surprised to find the village children not to be country yokels after all.

"A brief survey of the National School was not the least agreeable feature of a morning spent at Findon. The children appeared to be of good physique and exceedingly well cared for, and their attire was not of that rustic character which would have been found there some thirty or forty years ago. Herein is a new link between town and country, for even rural children nowadays demand the sartorial smartness of the neighbouring towns.

With so painstaking a Mistress as Miss Elizabeth Bull, who has devoted the best part of her life to the service of the School, and who is aided by capable Assistants, the best educational results are obviously achieved. The essentials of a substantial elementary education are first insisted upon, and then come accomplishments designed to stimulate the larger intelligence.

The girls excel in needlework and the boys in drawing, one little lad in particular exhibiting himself as extremely clever in the art of ornamental writing."

It would be nice to know if the young lad, who was deft in the art of penmanship, ever made a career of his talent in later years. The description of the school continued,

"Boys and girls alike do well as essayists and prize winners, and the physical exercises in which they take so much delight have a manifestly good effect upon their bearing. And do we not remember that the scholars took a wider outlook than the purely parochial by carrying on an instructive correspondence with Boer children in the Concentration camps in South Africa whilst the War was in progress?"

It is wondered what subject matter the Findon children found to write about to their unfortunate counterparts of the South African war of 1899-1902 in which Britain defeated the Boers of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic.

Early in the twentieth century there was a Quarterly Certificate issued for Good Attendance at the school. Violet Ruth Ockenden was one of the girls under Elizabeth Bull's eagle eye. The picture shows such a certificate presented to young Violet on 30th September 1906 and signed by Elizabeth Bull. Violet was just six years old then and her home was at a cottage known as Montana (now renamed White Cottage) in Nepcote.

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THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.