Norsewood School 150 years: The pupil who became the teacher

Jackie Chalmers, with Angela McQuarrie, ringing the bell for 150 years of Norsewood School. Photo / Leanne Warr

Maureen Adlington (nee McKay) was 8 when she started attending Norsewood School.

Eight years later, she decided to enrol in teachers college and would end up taking on her first job back at her old school.

She wasn’t quite old enough to get into teachers college at 16 as back then, the mid-1960s, students normally had to be 17 to get in.

Maureen Adlington started her teaching career at Norsewood School in the 1960s. Photo / Leanne Warr

“There was a teacher shortage and they took me at 16 and a half. I was pretty rapt about that, but I didn’t want to leave home.”

Maureen was sent to Ardmore Teacher’s College, which was set up in 1948 and closed in 1974 to address the shortage of teachers.

Living in Norsewood with her family, Maureen was not given the option of going to Palmerston North, which was closer, for her two years at college.

She was so homesick, she says.

“My dad said stick to it and get your certificate. You’ll have a great career behind you.”

When she finished her two years, she applied for a role as a probationary assistant at Norsewood School, and got it.

She had always wanted to be a teacher and had made up her mind in sixth form that was what she was going to do.

Going back to work at her old school meant she could stay at home.

She worked there for a year and found “the staff were lovely and caring”.

Once she got her teaching certificate, she couldn’t continue in the role but was able to take on teaching a junior class at Ormondville School.

At 20, she got married and had children, but would continue to teach on and off for the next few years, teaching not only at Ormondville but also at Norsewood.

She loved her time teaching at Norsewood School, but it did have its pitfalls, she says.

“I was really well known in the area and some of the kids I taught were my cousins. They had to call me Miss McKay and then Mrs Adlington when I got married.”

While most were good about it, there was one who called her by her nickname.

“I didn’t have a problem with it, but it’s just a respect thing. The principal wasn’t very happy about it.”

While Maureen now lives outside the Tararua District, Norsewood still has a place in her heart.

She doesn’t know as many people now and a lot has changed since her youth but she still visits now and then.

Nothing much has changed in country schools, Maureen says. The parents still seem to be close with the teachers and the curriculum in primary schools is relatively the same.

Maureen is one of many people who will be visiting Norsewood to help the school celebrate its 150th anniversary.

Norsewood School in the 1880s.

It has been 150 years of ups and downs, including a devastating fire and a merger with other local schools.

Articles in Papers Past chronicle a little bit of history of the school’s formation, with an article from January 1873 mentioning schoolhouses to be built in Norsewood and Dannevirke.

The article states the settlements “contain a very large number of children, each family on average comprising four or five”.

In June of that year, it’s noted that 738 children were in attendance at schools throughout the province (Hawke’s Bay), “exclusive of Norsewood and Danevirk (sic) where there are about 100”.

The school was finally built in July 1873.

But a devastating fire in March 1888 saw 32 buildings, including the school, destroyed. Children attended class in the Crown Hotel until the school was rebuilt.

In 2004, schools at Matamau, Ormondville and Awariki merged with Norsewood which was renamed two years later to become Norsewood and Districts School.

The celebration on October 22 will be part of a weekend-long series of events and will include a morning tea and cake cutting.

Jackie Chalmers, who is one of the volunteers helping to organise the event, is still taking registrations for the day. Registration cost is $25.

Leanne Warr became editor of the Bush Telegraph in June 2023 and has been a journalist on and off since 1996 when she joined the Levin Chronicle, before moving on to other publications. She re-joined NZME in June 2021.