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The School on the Moor

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BBC Radio 4 Extra - The School on the Moor

Cornwall's Bolventor School has 24 pupils and Reginald Bennetts is head. 1948 documentary.

Revealing 1948 portrait of Cornwall’s Bolventor School with 24 pupils. Recorded over a week. With headmaster Reginald Bennetts. 

Revealing 1948 portrait of Bolventor School in Cornwall.

Just 24 pupils aged five to 15, in two classrooms with two teachers, plus headmaster Reginald Bennetts and his wife.

In this experimental programme, BBC engineers had set-up microphones around this tiny remote village school in the middle of Bodmin Moor in the Autumn of 1947. 

Microphones and cables were left to allow children to get used to them.

This programme was recorded over a week with the head as presenter, plus the stories of two former pupils, who attended the school when it opened in 1877. 

(The school closed in 1994).

Producer: Brandon Acton-Bond

First broadcast on the BBC West of England Home Service.

It evoked so many vivid memories for listeners and sparked a wider broadcast on the BBC Home Service in December 1948 (except for Scotland and Wales).

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