Overview
The drawing shown here was made by the Aalten draughtsman Willy Walvoort, who died in 2018. He added the following note: “The village school in 1824. Above: the entrance was on the church hill. Below: on Landstraat were the night watch, prison and fire brigade.”
In 1937 G.H. Rots described life in Aalten in earlier times in a series of articles. He wrote the following about the school:
“In the village of Aalten all children attended a single school. There was no division between them. Children of every religious denomination sat side by side on the school benches. The school was housed in a building on Landstraat next to the Dutch Reformed Church. The watch room was downstairs and the school was on the upper floor. Schoolmaster Stegeman was in charge. Together with two assistant teachers, he taught the young people of Aalten. With six children to a bench, there were around 60 to 70 pupils per teacher in winter. Every morning the classroom doors were opened and the headmaster said a prayer.
Order in the classroom was maintained with the cane, for anyone who would not listen was dealt with using a piece of wood. Schoolmaster Stegeman inspired considerable fear. But he was a hard-working man who spared no effort to make the education as good as possible. Evening school provided a useful opportunity to give children who had been forced to leave school at an early age a little more education. The schoolmaster then had a smaller class and teaching was more relaxed.”
The lower part of the building was at Landstraat level and largely dug into the church hill. It contained the night watch room, the room for the fire engines, a cellar and the prison cell. Upstairs was the classroom, about 9 by 15 metres, with eight large windows, four of which could be opened for ventilation. The entrance was in the east wall, on the side where the Elim building now stands, and was reached by a path running directly alongside the churchyard. Two toilets were also built outside against the east wall.
The building was put up for sale in 1886, probably because the new Public Primary School on Herenstraat had opened.
Today the former school is used as a residence, while the ground floor houses Ter Maat Hair Salon.
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