Villagers Pull Teacher On Sleigh After the Battle of Aycliffe
The Northern Echo › September 06, 2006
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Summary
THE Battle of Aycliffe was a magnificently parochial confrontation. The vicar, egged on by his wife, sacked the popular schoolmaster for missing choir practice. After a comical showdown at the school door, villagers victoriously dragged the teacher on a sleigh through the snow to the back of a pub where he held temporary lessons.
Then they raised nearly 1,000 to build him his own school, which opened triumphantly just three minutes' walk from the vicar's educational establishment on the green.See the full content of this document
Extract
Villagers Pull Teacher On Sleigh After the Battle of Aycliffe
This weekend, the villagers' school is the scene of an exhibition which recalls the Battle of Aycliffe and the history of the village that was cut in two by the Great North Road - and was bitterly divided by the behaviour of the vicar.
The hero of the tale is Henry Thompson, an Alnwick lad who had qualified as a teacher at Bede College, Durham. He was working in a school in Northumberland in May 1875 when Canon John Eade offered him the post of schoolmaster of Ayclif...See the full content of this document
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