History Continued

NONCONFORMITY
In 1705, 1791, and 1798 houses were licensed for worship. A Wesleyan chapel was built west of High Street c. 1818 and in 1837 there were 17 members. In 1851 29 adults and 32 Sunday schoolchildren attended morning service on Census Sunday and 52 adults in the evening. In 1861 there were three resident Methodist preachers. The chapel was closed in 1995.
EDUCATION
In 1818 a Dissenting school taught 20 children. A Sunday school for 40 children supported by the curate started in 1822. In 1833 the parents of 13 children paid for them to go to a day school. By 1847 a National school had been established, shared with Batcombe and attended by 103 children. A school board was formed compulsorily in 1881 and the school was transferred to it. In 1882 a new school was built to designs by R. J. Withers on a site given under the will of Michael Reynolds (d. 1858). There were 50 children on the books in 1898 but only 39 in 1906. Numbers continued to fall and, following the transfer of senior pupils to Bruton in 1932, there were only 18 children on the register. A large number of evacuees attended in the 1940s but from 1945 there were fewer than 20 children on the register and the school closed in 1958, the children transferring to Bruton.
In 1962 plans were drawn up for a new mixed primary school at Upton Noble to serve surrounding villages and in 1965 the school, of voluntary controlled status, had 150 children on the register. There were 137 children in 1992.
CHARITIES FOR THE POOR
By will of 1790 Susannah Baker gave the residue of £1,000 stock during the life of her brothers to poor women of the parish and of Wilton (Wilts.). In 1825 one woman from each parish received 1s. 6d. per week. The capital in 1841 was £278 but the last brother had died in 1833 and by 1873 the charity had lapsed.

From: 'Upton Noble', A History of the County of Somerset: Volume 7: Bruton, Horethorne and Norton Ferris Hundreds (1999), pp. 59-63.

URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=18736. Date accessed: 04 March 2008.