Sarah Jane Fielden and her Centre Vale School

Sarah Jane Fielden was from the Yates family of Liverpool. Wealthy, entrepreneurial, public benefactors, the Yates family had strong links to Unitarian beliefs. While some branches of the family were abolitionists others owned plantations and slaves in America.
Before her marriage to Samuel Fielden, Sarah Jane travelled widely studying the new teaching methods then developing. As a married woman she continued the Yates and Unitarian interest in education. She opened a small school in Todmorden that gained a high reputation before establishing Centre Vale School, which took in its first pupils in March 1872.
The school took about 180 pupils, mostly but not all girls, whose parents paid 4 old pence a week. [At this time a mill worker was paid between five and eight shillings a week, so this is equivalent to between 4% and 7% of the wage – or between £23.40 and £40.95 today].

Mrs Fielden was a woman of determination and, by some accounts, a sharp tongue. She was unhappy with the low standards of teaching and the lack of teacher training at that time and determined to do what she could to rectify the situation. She developed her own teaching methods. The big hall was open plan for three classes, controlled largely in silence by means of “The Signal”. There were more classes above the cloakroom.