Flag lowered for last time at village school

Apr 25 2008 by Rebecca Edwards, Chester Chronicle

Flag lowered for last time at village school

THE final duty of Harthill Primary School headteacher Mo Morron will be to lower the school flag, before handing the keys to county building managers later today.

After 140 years at the hub of the community, the buildings today (Friday) officially cease to be Harthill School.

Cheshire County Council is in negotiations with the Bolesworth Estate over the site’s future.

Mrs Morron, whose flag duties will be assisted by caretaker Eric Dimelow, admits it will be an emotional moment after a “difficult” year in which the school was closed in Cheshire County Council’s Transforming Learning Communities project.

Since the school’s pupils and teachers left in February, Mrs Morron and remaining staff have been clearing the buildings of furniture and teaching material.

Many resources have been sent to neighbouring schools while surplus items such as tables have been sent to African schools through the charity Education 4 All.

Mrs Morron, who has been head for the past 14 years, said she is pleased the school’s legacy will continue.

“The children have gone to Saighton Primary School and have set up an eco-committee with a view to becoming an eco-school.

“I am going to be an advisor for schools in Cheshire who want to become eco-schools and do environmental work.

“We were one of a small number of schools to have a permanent Green Flag for our eco work and I am particularly pleased that we are recycling everything.”

In the loft of the old schoolhouse, inhabited for many years by former headteachers Miss Croucher and Miss Davies, she made some unexpected discoveries.

“We found a piece of a Roman pottery excavated in Holt in 1910, a small piece of a Zeppelin airship with a label saying it was downed in Wigborough, Essex in 1916 and donated to the school by Rev Theobald in 1922.

“We have old photos from the school and the admissions books, which shows the evacuees from Liverpool who enrolled at the school.

“Jonathan Pepler of the Cheshire Records Office is going to keep these and find out more about where they came from.

“We also found a number of women’s hats from the 1930s and 1940s still in their boxes. They are being sent to the Grosvenor Museum.

“In 1996 we buried a time capsule as part of the Vision 2020 project in which the children put pictures, letters and poems about what they thought 2020 would be like.

“We have dug it up and given it to the Grosvenor Museum and a member of that class, Catherine Sharatt, who is 21 and whose parents live in Malpas, has volunteered to open it on February 1, 2020 and tell people about it.”

Mrs Morron added: “We had a thanksgiving service last month and we were overwhelmed with the number of people who have written letters and cards with their memories of Harthill, and telling us how proud they are to have been pupils there.

“It has been a school for 140 years and from the response of the community we know it has been a much-loved place. It is all those people who have made the school.”