A Little Checkered History of Swaffham Prior School
THE school was originally run entirely by the church and situated at the bottom
of the church steps, but in the 1 920s, the LEA decided that it was in a very
poor state of repair and should be replaced. They offered to build a new school
- but under their control. There was a great deal of opposition to this loss of
control, which resulted in the local squire and the vicar putting up the money
to build the present school in 1928. This is the building which now houses our
hall, offices and kitchen.
As the school was nearing completion, Henry Morris began the Village Colleges and it was decided that the senior children should transfer to Burwell, rather than Bottisham. This caused such uproar in the village that the police put a guard on the new school to prevent the senior pupils from entering. Parents retaliated by employing a teacher privately to work with the seniors in the village hall, although some children did attend Swaffham Bulbeck School instead.
There followed a period of great unrest, which resulted finally in the head teacher's resignation in 1934. There were then 60 children on roll. Gradually things began to settle down but with the advent of the war in 1939, evacuees began to arrive, and numbers fluctuated between 60 and 100.
After the war, in 1947, the school finally came under the control of the Local Education Authority although retaining its Church of England status. At the same time school meals were delivered from Burwell.
Children from Reach started attending the school in 1960 with the closure of their village school.
The classrooms in present use were built in 1966, and the two sections connected by a covered way at a later date. The mobile classroom was added as numbers increased. In the last few years, further modifications have made the school accessible to disabled children. The library extension was added in 1997 and the new classroom in 1998, to be followed by a new staffroom in 2003. We now have a school which is comfortably adapted to its present use, but one which reflects and reminds us of its past.