HAVING your photograph taken was a serious business in 1919, judging by this second class at Stanbury Council School. Thanks to the late Mrs Eva Dent, in the middle of the back row, we know every child’s name.

On the back row, from left, are Elsie Whitaker, Nellie Preston, Lizzie Hartley, Eva Nicholson, Rita Hall, Martha Humphreys and Clara Feather.

At the front sit Vernon Walbank, Sidney Stirt, Irvin Nicholson, George Knowles, Lily Masters, Nellie Hartley and Alice Smith. The teacher was Miss Rushworth.

Several of the girls were daughters of navvies employed on the Sladen Valley Reservoir, a long-running project not completed until 1925. The children have probably been told beforehand that they were to be photographed, as they appear to be wearing their best clothes. The boys are wearing boots rather than clogs.

Two of the girls are holding dolls, possibly part of a custom originating at Christmas in 1914, when Stanbury School joined a scheme to send presents to the children of soldiers and sailors on active service. The girls had dressed dolls.