Lives in Cricket No 21 - Walter Read

8 post-master and there is another girls’ school on the east side of the town in Bell Street with Elizabeth Kelsey as Head, two lady teachers, sixteen resident pupils and two servants. In an education-conscious small town there was already the Grammar School, an eighteenth century foundation, and within two decades, a couple more - a British School in the High Street, built in 1852 and enlarged in 1868 and a National School in the London Road dating from 1859, the latter expanding its scope and advertising as follows: REIGATE NATIONAL SCHOOLS - An evening school for adults has been opened at the Reigate National School-room under the direction of the master, Mr Beale. The evenings for attendance are Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. There can be no doubt of the great benefits conferred on the people by the institution of night schools and we hope to see the movement obtain success in the borough. There was also publicity for ‘middle-class education’ and a ‘morning school for young ladies under the age of twelve’. All these, of course, preceded the Education Act of 1870 and owed more to private initiative than state legislation. The Victorian class structure was rigid and significant, but within it there were opportunities for self-improvement. The schools served a mixed community and an expanding economy. Also in West Street, in addition to teachers and pupils, the cooper and the blacksmith, were a surveyor, carpenter, maltman and several labourers, the schools in the area providing the educational lubrication to assist social aspiration, something which was to become very important to Walter in later years. Children soon followed the marriage – first Robert, named after his father, in 1843; then Jane in 1845, Elizabeth in 1847 (both named after their mother whose two forenames seem interchangeable), Emily in 1849, Arthur in 1851 and finally Walter in 1855. Also, living with the family was Ann, Robert’s sister-in law. In 1851, the neighbours are still the same maltsters, blacksmiths, coopers etc but not in the same order, suggesting that the Census enumerator took a different route from that travelled ten years previously. Miss Jelley is no longer there, superseded by Robert’s wife and growing family Robert took his profession seriously. He was an early member of the College of Preceptors (now College of Teachers) an incorporated society of Schoolmasters, dating from 1846, which Family Background