The Anglican Church

Thus the so-called British and Foreign School was virtually absorbed into the Nelson School Society which became the major, but not the only, provider of elementary education in the Nelson area. An Anglican elementary school, the Bishop's school, had been operating since 1842 and by 1844 had some 50 day pupils on its roll. Bishop Selwyn was insistent that the management of Anglican schools should be firmly under the control of his clergy. The Rev. C. L. Reay and later his deacon, the Rev. H. F. Butt, were responsible for the running of the Bishop's School. A schoolmaster, R. Sutcliffe, a former shoemaker, was engaged, but nothing like a school committee was ever appointed. Reay was highly critical of Campbell and the Nelson School Society and reacted badly to Campbell's conciliatory approaches. Tuckett, in a letter of this period, describes Reay's attitude to Campbell thus:

"The episcopal Minister Reay, with a bigotry and fanaticism worthy of the era of the inquisition, insults him in church by denouncing him as leading the children to perdition."

Reay and the Bishop maintained their hostile attitude towards the Nelson School Society until Reay's departure from Nelson in 1847, but later the Bishop came to acknowledge that the Society's schools performed a worthwhile function.

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Besides the Bishop's School at Nelson, Reay also encouraged the establishment of Anglican schools in the countryside. The Hon. Constantine Dillon endeavoured to foster a school under Reay's auspices at Waimea West but ran into difficulties.

"It is quite extraordinary to me, he wrote, how difficult it is to persuade them (the pupils) to come, especially as at a village about 10 miles further inland where there are none but labouring men settled on small pieces of land they have voluntarily built a chapel and established a school which all boys and girls attend regularly. Five of the men take it by turns to teach them and I am told that they never miss."

Almost certainly this latter school, which was at Wakefield, was the Nelson School Society school mentioned above, but it might possibly have been the school organised at Wakefield in 1843 by the millwright Edward Baigent and later supported by Reay as an Anglican school. Whatever it was, there was no doubt about the abundant spirit of self-help shown by the small, outlying community of working class people at Wakefield. The small school at Waimea West was carried on for some years by Mrs Dillon as a personal voluntary effort.