Today children in the countryside are usually brought to school by car or school bus. It was rather different in Victorian times, and bad weather was much more of a problem.

Most children walked to school and many had miles to walk to get there. It was quite a challenge for a child at four to walk to and from school in pouring rain, often in the dark on unlit muddy roads for miles.

This entry from the diary of Derwenlas school for 20th December 1886 reads as follows :
"Deep snow covers the earth, the prospect for attendance this week is very poor: hard frost makes the weather bitterly cold."

Some of the poorer children had no shoes and parents were reluctant to send children if they would get soaked and risked becoming very ill. There is more about this on the next page...

More weather trouble at Darowen...