Burston Strike School
school founded as consequence of strike in Norfolk, England, UK
The Burston Strike School was founded as a consequence of a school strike and became the centre of the longest running strike in British history, that lasted from 1914 to 1939 in the village of Burston in Norfolk, England. Today, the building stands as a museum to the strike. Every year hundreds of people turn up for a rally to commemorate the 25-year strike of Annie and Tom Higdon.
History
The strike began when teachers at the village's Church of England school, Annie Higdon and her husband, Tom Higdon, were sacked after a dispute with the area's school management committee. The schoolchildren – led by Violet Potter – went on strike in their support. Encouraged by the community, the Higdons went on to set up an alternative school, which was initially attended by 66 of their 72 former pupils. Beginning in a marquee on the village green, the school moved to a local carpenter's premises and later to a purpose-built school financed by donations from the labour movement. Burston Strike School carried on teaching local children until shortly after Tom's death in 1939.
Background to the strike
Annie Katherine Schollick, known as Kitty, married Tom Higdon, the son of a farm labourer, in 1896. They lived first in London before moving to Wood Dalling in Norfolk in 1902.
“Burston Strike School” enters the record as school founded as consequence of strike in Norfolk, England, UK. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Burston, Strike and School can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5000657. VIAF identifies the subject as 154909070. The Library of Congress control number is n91121194. Authority coordinates are 52.405, 1.140. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1939, 1896 and 1902.
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This entry incorporates text from “Burston Strike School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.