Wynyard School was a boarding school in Watford. From September, 1908, until June, 1910, the school was attended by C.S. Lewis.

Lewis was schooled by private tutors in Belfast before being sent to Wynyard. This was common practice for boys of this time. At the age of ten, the sons of wealthy families would be sent away to boarding schools and they often wouldn’t see their families until the end of term. Daughters, on the other hand, would continue their learning at home, with singing, playing piano and sewing the main subjects covered.

It wasn’t until 1880 that the Elementary Education Act made it law that all children aged five to 10 must go to primary school to receive a basic education. Soon after, grants were made available to all schools to enable them to stop charging fees and provide free education.

Most lessons focused on the three Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic. There would also be lessons on religion, geography and history. Boys and girls would sit on different sides of the classroom, with separate entrances into the school and separate playgrounds. Classes would be much larger than they are today and would contain children of a wide age range.

There were few male teachers because the pay wasn’t very good. It was an occupation for unmarried women, who would retire when they married.

For those wanting to continue their education after leaving school, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge imposed three barriers to entrance: the applicant had to be male, unmarried and a member of the Church of England. Oxford didn’t allow female candidates until 1920, and Cambridge until 1947.

In schools, it was common practice to humiliate students whose work was substandard. Children were often made to stand on a stool in full view of the class while wearing a dunces cap.

Corporal punishment was also common. Boys would be caned on their hands or bottom, while girls were caned on their hands or the backs of their legs. In public schools prefects would also carry canes so they could discipline other students. Anything that displeased a teacher - being rude, talking back, poor work - was grounds for punishment. Even children who were left-handed were punished and made to write with their right hand.

Lewis’ vivid account of the miseries he suffered at Wynyard do not seem to have been exaggerated. The discipline was so severe that the family of one pupil took an action for assault, which appears to have destroyed the school financially.

Soon after the school closed, the headmaster, Robert Capron, suffered a breakdown and was committed to an insane asylum.

When the school closed, Lewis attended a number of different schools until he was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford, in 1916.

Within months, however, the British Army shipped him to France to fight in World War I. He arrived at the front line in the Somme Valley on his 19th birthday.

He was wounded in 1918 and returned home to restart his studies. He received three firsts in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin literature), Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History), and English.

His experiences at Wynyard School didn’t seem to put him off education; he became a philosophy tutor at University College and was later elected a Fellow and Tutor in English literature at Magdalen College.

He was a prolific writer and his circle of literary friends became an informal discussion society known as the “Inklings”. The group included Lord David Cecil, Charles Williams and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Between 1949 and 1954, Lewis wrote a series of seven fantasy novels for children called The Chronicles of Narnia. Today, the series has sold over 100 million copies in 41 languages.