An oral history project has been collecting people's memories of being at school in the Tithe Barn since the 1920s. The last Secondary School class left in 1953. However, many of Nailsea's residents remember the school either as Hannah More Infants or as the annexe to Grove Junior in the 1960s, '70s and '80s.

'I started school there in 1924. I was 5 years old. Newcomers went to Miss Persil's class. She taught us to write. We had a square box about one inch deep and sand was put in it. We were given wooden meat skewers to write in the sand. Quite a good way really no waste of paper.' (Winifred Carter nee Shortman) 

'At the age of 11 on Sept 5^th 1949 I was collected along with fellow new pupils by Osmond coaches and deposited at our new senior school ... bursting at the seams with only 5 classrooms but 10 classes. There were times when a teacher would come striding into the classroom and fling the windows open and get everybody outside. The coke stove was playing up and giving out toxic fumes and sending us to sleep.' (David Knights)

During the Second World War many children evacuated from the cities were taught at Old Church School, as it was then called, at the Tithe Barn.

Howard Askew, a former Nailsea resident now living in Australia, has sent his memories and a school photograph taken at the Tithe Barn in about 1950 to Nailsea People:  

http://www.nailseapeople.co.uk/yesterdays-Nailsea-Howard-Askew-remembers/story-13148862-detail/story.html