This building on the High Street in Bassingbourn will be known to many as the Old School Building.
A school board was formed in 1874, and a new schoolhouse, with a schoolroom and 2 classrooms and a master’s house attached, was opened on the north side of the high street in 1877. Many of the children whom it took over from the National and British schools, which both closed that year, were barely literate.
The board school, which had accommodation for 344 pupils, was divided into separate departments for boys, girls, and infants until 1912, when they were combined under a single headmaster.
Schoolpence (a small weekly sum paid in school for tuition) were collected here until 1891. Organised sports and, in winter, free school meals, sponsored by Sidney Holland of Kneesworth Hall, were instituted in 1912.
From 1954 the older children attended Bassingbourn Village College which opened that year and in 1963 new buildings were opened for the primary school pupils. The Old School on the high street was subsequently used for the infants until 1990.
After this date the building became known as The Limes and serves as a community facility managed by South Cambridgeshire Council.
It now acts as a Book Cafe providing villagers access to the Cambridgeshire County Library and is a great meeting place with coffee and refreshments, two computers with free Wi-Fi access.
It also serves as a Polling Station and a rehearsal venue for Bassingbourn Village Band.
A few years back it was technically a community facility for the sheltered housing located behind it, but still housed the community activities listed above.
For more information on Bassingbourn’s history visit www.british-history.ac.uk, www.bassingbourn.org
FB Bassingbourn Cum Kneesworth at Home
