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From The Muniment Room, a resource for social history, family history, and local history.

North Stoneham School, also known as the Estate School, was the parish's national school at Bassett Green, and later at Middle Stoneham.

The first schoolhouse was built at Bassett Green in 1812, a project sponsored by Mrs Elizabeth Fleming as her last benefaction before relinquishing her life interest in the Estate. Mrs Fleming's grandfather, Edward Dummer (d.1724) of Swaythling, had previously endowed Swaythling School with £300 and an annual payment of £5, charged on his Swaythling estate^[1], to support the education of eight boys at Swaythling School, comprising four boys from North Stoneham parish, and four from South Stoneham parish.

Following Elizabeth Fleming's death in 1817, John Barton Willis Fleming suppressed Swaything School, and transferred Edmund Dummer's endowment to North Stoneham School at Bassett Green, on the condition that four children from South Stoneham could be educated there free of charge^[2].

A further 140-152 children were educated at the school, which was partly supported by the Estate. In 1818, the master's salary was £25, and raised by subscription. The school used Bell's Madras system of education. The select committee concluded in 1818 that, in contrast to many other parishes, at North Stoneham 'the poor have ample means of instruction, of which they avail themselves to the utmost'.^[3]

In 1818, there was also a second school in the parish, in which 8 or 9 very young children were instructed by 'a woman'.

By 1875, the Estate was paying £75 annually towards the schoolmaster's salary. The same year, the Education Department decided not to enlarge the existing school, but to instead build a new one. ' The first school room later became a parish room and mission church called St Christopher's.

The new school, built 1876

The new school at Stoneham Lane

The new school at Stoneham Lane

In 1876 a new school was built on land provided by the Estate at Middle Stoneham; the land conveyance contained clauses for the School's regulation^[4].

References

1. ↑ Deed of indemnity of John Fleming to John Bond against rent charge of £5 given by will of Edmund Dummer for school at Stoneham, 22 Apr 1778.  HRO 8M56/271
2. ↑ Digest of parochial returns to circular letter from the select committee for the education of the poor (1818). In 1817, Rev Frederick Beadon recorded in the parish register: 'This year the sum of five pounds left by bequest for the education of four children of this parish and four children of South Stoneham has been transferred from the school at Swaythling to that of Bassett Lane End in this parish. The Bequest charges the estate of Swaythling now in the possession of John Fleming Esq. with the payment of the said sum annually.
3. ↑ Digest of parochial returns to circular letter from the select committee for the education of the poor (1818)
4. ↑ * Conveyance of school site at North Stoneham, 1876