Historic Sites of Manitoba: Bidford School No. 456 (Municipality of Deloraine-Winchester)

The Bidford School District was established in July 1885, named for a town in England from which a local settler had come. A first schoolhouse, a small one-room frame structure, operated at NW16-4-22W in what is now the Municipality of Deloraine-Winchester. In the early 1890s, the school was moved to the northeast corner of SE16-4-22W and it was enlarged in 1901. Seven years later, through the efforts of Education Minister R. S. Thornton, a one-room schoolhouse made of red bricks with a full basement was constructed one-half mile south, on a four-acre grounds in the southeast corner of SE16-4-22W. Between 1922 and 1925, the basement was used for high school classes. Closed in 1964, the district was dissolved two years later and its catchment area became part of the Deloraine Consolidated School District and later the Antler River School Division. The building was sold at auction on 13 April 1966 and is no longer present at the site.

Among the teachers of Bidford School were F. J. Cornell, Miss Bella Wightman, Miss Mae McKinney (1917-1918), and Marjorie Claeys (1964).

Bidford School, constructed in 1918 (no date) by George Hunter Source: Archives of Manitoba, School Inspectors Photographs, GR8461, A0233, C131-1, page 62. Site Location (lat/long): N49.29680, W100.37576 denoted by symbol on the map above

Sources:

Our Heritage by Regent Women’s Institute, c1967, pages 29-31. [Manitoba Legislative Library, F5649.R44 Reg]

Elgin West topographic map, 62F/08 West, Edition 1, Series A743 [Archives of Manitoba].

One Hundred Years in the History of the Rural Schools of Manitoba: Their Formation, Reorganization and Dissolution (1871-1971) by Mary B. Perfect, MEd thesis, University of Manitoba, April 1978.

This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.

Page revised: 16 February 2017

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