Information extracted from British History Online (www.british-history.ac.uk)
History: Education.
About 1550 the son of a substantial yeoman, kept at school, wrote accounts for his illiterate father, then bailiff of Huntingfields manor. No organized school was recorded at Litlington until after 1800. In 1807 a man kept a day school. Dr. Webb, vicar 1816–56, had by 1818 started a Sunday school, which had c. 100 pupils. For more, please visit:
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In 1857 Clare College gave a part of the rectory close next to the street as a site for a National school. The committee of management included three leading farmers, occupying 1,210 a., over half the parish. The schoolroom with a teacher's house was completed by 1859, with the help of a state grant. The average attendance was then 60, schoolpence, subscriptions, and 'private benevolence' meeting the expenses. From the 1870s until 1920 attendance fluctuated between 70 and 85. From the 1870s it was usually taught as a mixed school. For more, please visit:
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Charities for the Poor.
A 10s. rent charge, given by William Bays for 10 poor men before 1718, was lost by 1728. Also before 1718 one Sewersby gave £1 to yield 14d. yearly for the poor. In the 1830s the churchwardens gave 1s. a year to the oldest widow in the parish; it was given every third year by 1908 from £1 stock, added in 1962 to Gray's charity.
Sir Walter Gray (1846–1918), son of a Litlington tradesman and mayor of Oxford, by will proved 1918 left the yield of £250 for the deserving poor of his native village. In the late 1920s the vicar's management was challenged by the parish council, suspecting discrimination against chapel people in his choice of the 20–25 recipients. In 1930 c. £13 was given in coal and groceries, and after 1950 £8–9 a year in Christmas parcels for old-age pensioners.
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