The School Log Books Project

The School Log Book project was designed investigate this underused source to cast light on family and community history from their origins in 1862. SLBs, as their name suggests, were supposed to be completed, on a regular basis, by the headmaster or senior teacher at all schools in receipt of public funds. Although entries were supposed to deal only with purely educational matters (they were examined annually by School Inspectors), they often contained much relating to local matters such as occupational variations, industrial affairs, health, poverty, weather, local customs, social hierarchies etc. Transcriptions of over 30 Logbooks are available on the Members Pages of this web site. Papers were written on several of the projects and these have been published as "SCHOOL and COMMUNITY: Family and community history through the prism of school logbooks" which is available through the shop priced at £5.