1900s-1945
The spring of 1945 brought a moment the people of Leigh had waited six long years to hear. On 8 May 1945, the announcement came that hostilities in Europe had ceased. The news of victory in Europe, remembered ever since as VE Day, marked the end of a conflict that had touched every corner of village life, from the schoolroom to the fields and the homes around the Green. Eighty years later, in May 2025, the village once again marked that anniversary, and the church was adorned with flowers in celebration and remembrance of the day peace returned to Europe.
For Leigh's children, the victory holiday began at school. The log book records that the school was closed for two days on 8 May 1945, allowing pupils to join in the celebrations sweeping the country. The village did not let the occasion pass quietly. The Courier carried a report headed 'Leigh Children Celebrate' in its edition of 18 May 1945, and the Tonbridge Free Press printed its own account dated Friday 18 May 1945, so that the festivities were recorded for posterity in the local press.
The celebrations organised by the village were on a generous scale. Nearly one hundred children assembled on the Green, where a children's party and sports had been arranged for their enjoyment. Among the amusements were wheelbarrow races, egg and spoon races, and thread the needle races, the kind of traditional games that needed little more than enthusiasm and a stretch of grass. Tea was served in the Village Hall, and each child received a victory gift of 1s 6d. About ninety children received this prize money. There were treats besides: ices were handed out as the gift of a well-wisher, dispensed from a motor-van parked on the Green, while inside the Village Hall the youngsters were given lemonade and soft drinks. When the children's festivities drew to a close, the day ended with a dance for grown-ups, giving the adults of the village their own chance to celebrate the peace.
Yet the joy of that May was tempered by memory. The war had come very close to Leigh, which lies on the shortest route from enemy-held territory to London, and the school itself had known tragedy. On 3 July 1944, Joan Chandler and Jimmy Longhurst were killed at the school in a terrible accident. Jimmy Longhurst had brought an unexploded shell into the classroom, and it went off with devastating consequences. No celebration in 1945 could undo such a loss, and the shadow of it hung over the community as it looked to the future.
Wartime had reshaped daily life at the school in other ways too. Evacuees had arrived at Leigh school in 1939, as children were moved out of the cities and into the countryside for safety. Lessons were sometimes held in the air raid shelters behind the school when danger threatened, and the school day was sometimes shortened during the war years. The village as a whole played its part, raising funds for the war effort throughout the conflict.
Even so, the summer of 1945 offered moments of older traditions revived. Empire Day, which had not been celebrated at the school since 1939, returned on 24 May 1945. The Union Jack was flown for the occasion, and the headmaster conducted a special Empire Service, restoring a ceremony that had been suspended throughout the war. It was a sign that ordinary rhythms of school life were beginning to return.
Change was coming to the school itself, however. The 1944 Butler Education Act reorganized education across the country, and Leigh School was reclassified as a junior and infant school. The seniors were to be transferred to modern schools in Tonbridge, with the transfer taking effect on 1 October 1945. The arrangements were settled at a meeting of the Managers, whose Minutes record a gathering held on 21 August 1945. At that meeting the Managers took the opportunity to thank the staff for their wartime service, a fitting acknowledgement of all they had carried through the difficult years.
The end of the war also marked the close of an era in the school's staffing. Mr Gibbons had been headmaster since 1925, guiding the school through two decades that included the darkest years of the twentieth century, and he departed after the war. So too did Miss Winifred Ellis, who had been the infant teacher since 1927. Between them, they had taught a generation of Leigh's children, and their departures, coming alongside the reorganization under the Butler Act, meant that the school that emerged into peacetime was in many ways a new institution, even in familiar buildings.
Writing in the Parish Magazine in May 2025, Joyce Field reflected on these events for the eightieth anniversary of VE Day. Her article reminded readers of how deeply the war had reached into village life, and of how the community had marked the coming of peace. As the flowers in the church testified once again in 2025, the memory of May 1945 remains close to Leigh: a day of games on the Green, ices and lemonade, a dance in the evening, and, above all, thanksgiving that the war in Europe was over — even as the conflict in Japan continued, and full peace had yet to come.