Ellen Armstrong, the inn-keeper’s nineteen-year-old daughter, opens the first school with nineteen pupils, operating from a pre-fabricated zinc house erected in the backyard of the hotel.
When Thomas Walker, the government inspector paid ‘Miss Armstrong’s School’ a visit he found that she: ‘had good discipline and the general tone of the school was very satisfactory’. Walker described her as ‘painstaking and persevering and well-liked by the parents’. He recommended that government aid should be given towards her teacher’s salary.
