Pupils past and present came together to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Gunnerside Methodist VC School.

THE poster announcing the 150th anniversary service calls it Gunnerside Methodist VC School. Since there are more valorous undertakings than growing up amid Swaledale's incomparable delights, it must be assumed that VC stands not for Victoria Cross but for voluntary controlled.

The school, as we shall hear, may have a fight on its hands for all that.

Lessons would probably have started a few years earlier, save for the belief that Swaledale's hand-to-mouth lead miners would struggle to pay the twopence a week fee necessary to meet the master's £20 annual salary.

When it did open, numbers stood at 103, the single room divided by a curtain. They peaked at 170 and apart from the war - when evacuees arrived from Gateshead, Middlesbrough and Sunderland - have been declining ever since.

Schools at Muker and Keld are long closed. Now Gunnerside has just 19 primary age pupils, drawn from the Cumbrian border in the west to Low Row, to the east. Next month, the school loses its last full-time head teacher; from September pupils will spend two afternoons a week in larger classes at Reeth.

Thin end of the educational wedge? "The county council is working creatively to ensure the future, the school's position is guaranteed," says departing head Penny Vernon, moving to Osmotherley on the back of a "fabulous" Ofsted report.

She will be replaced by a one-day-a- week headmaster, the school is day to day in the charge of a "lead" teacher.

"It's absolutely vital to have a school here," says Jane Harris, the Methodist minister. "It's a partnership with the community that works for good in every sense."

Upper Swaledale is much challenged, for all that. Many of its houses are something for the weekend now, or for holidays, or retirement.

Though early log books were lost in a fire in 1963 - for five years thereafter, the pupils gathered in the village institute, Gunnerside parents having refused to send their children to Reeth - old school ties remain.

Early records show that in 1863, senior girls were allowed time off to help with the washing and that the whole school would close so that pupils could help the harvest home.

In 1865, the syllabus not only included reading, writing and the other thing but Euclid, history, geography, mensuration, freehand and geometrical drawing, scripture, natural history and "object lessons".

Another object lesson, the 1874 inspector's report - a sort of early doors Ofsted - was "adversely influenced" by the arrival of children from the village's National (Church of England) School, which had closed.

"They had a different system of teaching and were behind in their standard marks," the governors noted.

"Apologies to the Anglicans here," says Mrs Harris, whose husband is the minister in Wensleydale.

The following year, fees rose to twopence ha'penny, nonetheless, and though it mightn't sound much, the top of the class will know that it was a 25 per cent increase.

Rosa Laurie, among those at Sunday's service, had started at the school in 1917, still plays the organ at Gunnerside Methodist church, recalls that it was usually the boys who played truant.

Once, she remembers, her brothers bunked off to watch the otter hounds by the Swale. "They got a jolly good caning, were told to tell our parents and then got another thrashing when they got home."

She twinkles. "They weren't all the good old days, you know."

She herself had been encouraged to become a teacher. "I was quite good at school, but was forbidden by my father. He said there was plenty for me to do at home. I stayed and looked after my parents, and never regretted it."

A lovely service on a splendid summer Sunday is led by Jane Harris, officially chaplain to the school. Paragliders sail silently overhead, as if in salute to the great occasion.

Pupils recall that in 1854, Oscar Wilde was born, the Crimean War began and that the composer Sousa struck his first note.

In Sousa's honour, organist George Lundberg plays Liberty Bell, which may more frequently be heard on a fairground organ. It sounds a bit like the one about the bloomin' great puddin' which comes flying through the air. That was probably Sousa, too.

The bairns, several short of a complement, sing familiar songs like Give Me Oil In My Lamp and Lord of the Dance. The head reads the three biblical verses, 72 words, about suffering the little children.

Before Mr Jos Huddlestone's sermon, however - and before the magnificent cake iced with all their faces - the children are taken outside for a "breather". How many down those 150 formative years would have wished for such understanding?

Mr Huddlestone, head of Richmond Methodist school - there are 57 nationally - regrets their absence. "I was going to suggest to them that the next time the teacher looked over their shoulder and said 'Only 72 words,' they could have said that if it was good enough for St Luke, it was good enough for them."

He'd hoped to restrict himself to ten minutes and speaks for 16; Mrs Harris had expected the service to be over in 45 minutes and discovers that it lasts exactly an hour.

Methodism is like a sort of ecclesiastical egg timer. Services always last an hour. VC or not, this happy anniversary was among Gunnerside's finest.