Welsh Journals

A HISTORY OF THE SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION IN BUCKLEY1 By J. CLIFFORD Jones. In tracing the history of schools and the development of educa- tion in Buckley, mention should first be made of the Hawarden Grammar School which owes its foundation to a native of Buckley. This was George Ledsham, who was born at Farm Stile, in what is now Liverpool Road.2 In the year 1606 he bequeathed the sum of £ 300 for the erection and maintenance of a free Grammar School in the churchyard at Hawarden. In 1608 the parishioners expended £ 50 in the erection of a school-a single room 48 ft. by 20 ft. In 1814 the school was rebuilt with the addition of a dormitory for boarders and a house for the master. It is fairly certain that few of the people of Buckley ever attended this school or benefited in any way from the endowment until it was handed over for the support of the present Hawarden Grammar School in 1894. There is evidence however that W. Ll. Williams, a paid monitor at St. Matthew's School, left in 1873 to attend the Grammar School and that S. Dunn, also a pupil at St. Matthew's, left in 1877 for the Hawarden School. In 1780 Richard Willett, a native of Nantwich, was appointed Master of Hawarden Grammar School and in 1818 wrote his Memoir of Hawarden Parish, in which we read that the development of the fire-brick and coarse earthenware industries has occasioned a great population in the neighbourhood of the clay deposits on Buckley Mountain in the Lordships of Hawarden and Ewloe, and the situa- tion being nearly three miles distant from the parish church, ignor- ance and irreligion must have continued the necessary consequence had it not been for the unshaken perseverance of Sectaries. These men, to their credit be it spoken, arrested the vicious and intemper- ate career of the young, the ignorant and the licentious of this distant i. — am indebted to Mr. M. Bevan-Evans, M.A., and to the members of the Buckley Tutorial Class in Local History (1952-53) for valuable informa- tion and assistance in compiling this record, and to the Head Teachers of all the Buckley Schools for the loan of their log books from which most of the information has been gathered. A more detailed account of the history of St. Matthew's School is given in my booklet St. Matthew's School, Buckley, 1849­1949×" 2. — See [R. Willett] Memoir of Hawarden Parish (1822), p. 82, footnote "Mr. Ledsham was a Freeholder of this Hawarden parish and the proprietor of that Estate in Ewloe, known by the name of Farm Stile, the which he gave to his sister Ann Ledsham who married a Mr. Robert Jones, farmer at Bistree, in the Parish of Mold, and grandfather of the late Mr. Jones, of Farm Stile afore- said. This last Mr. Jones, having no issue, willed the Estate to his nephew, Mr. William Leach, his eldest sister's eldest son by Mr. John Leach, of Pen- trobin, who is the present possessor "(i,e.ini822). Miss Ethel Leach, who married Mr. Samuel Higgins of The Cross, Buckley, was the last member of the Leach family to reside at Farm Stile, which is now occupied by Mr. Philip L. Dunn.