The Lachmansingh Primary School at Bush Lot, West Coast Berbice started out in a humble v-roofed wooden structure – though not at its present location – which was too small to accommodate the students.
Former headmaster of the school, Arnold Persaud, giving the history of the building told this newspaper that the school was known to the Education Department as the Bush Lot Canadian Mission School.
He recalled that it lacked the space to accommodate all the furniture needed, and many of the children had to “sit on the floor and write” or “kneel and write on desks.” This was up until 1944 when Dr JP Lachmansingh decided to change things.
Persaud, a student of the school at that time told Stabroek News that during a visit to his natal village, “Dr Lachmansingh became concerned about the way the children were receiving their lessons.”
He subsequently summoned the residents to a meeting and informed them that he was going to build a new school and all he was requesting of them was their co-operation.
Dr Lachmansingh provided half of the funding for the new building and his siblings provided the other half.
He also paid the wages of the workers and when he was unable to travel from Georgetown on Saturdays, his brother Sarabjeet went and uplifted them. Residents had pledged their full support and lived up to their pledge.
According to Persaud loggers were sent up the Abary River to cut hardwood and simarupa logs, which were then brought to the Abary Bridge where a saw was set up to make boards and scantlings. The lap edge and groove and tongue boards were sawn by hand.
He recounted that some of the carpenters were the Sukhai and Wazid brothers and the Ramoutar family. The cornerstone was laid by Dr Lachmansingh’s aunt, ‘Baby’ Laganey, who placed a five dollar bill in a metal cup in the cornerstone. Persaud said the old building has since “collapsed and the lumber removed, and no one cared for the cornerstone. It was knocking about, so to say.”
He decided to remove the stone and fix it by the roadside in front of his house, obliquely opposite the vacant lot where the old school once stood. “There is an engraving on the face side: May 15, 1944. The young generation today would hardly know the meaning of the cornerstone if someone is not around to tell,” he said. Upon completion of the school building the name was changed from Bush Lot Canadian Mission to Lachmansingh Memorial Canadian Mission School, in memory of his father, John ‘Babu’ Cropper Lachmansingh, a Christian who was baptized by the Canadian Presbyterian, Reverend John Cropper. Persaud said his grandfather took the name John Cropper from the minister who baptized him. According to him, later when the government took over some of the schools, the name Canadian Mission was dropped and the school became the Lachmansingh Memorial Govern-ment. Later still when government took over all the schools, it became the Lachmansingh Primary.
The old Lachmansingh Primary was replaced by new buildings to the north of the village, close to the Bush Lot Secondary and opposite the Bush Lot Nursery.
