Adorned by an inconvenient bus stop pole, coloured pink, a dump of a public trash bin, and the ugliness of overhead utility lines of all variety, there stands on the Middle Road in the far west of Warwick a unique, if forlorn, monument to the early education of Bermudians of African descent. The single-storey, one room building was a school for the said (young) denizens of Warwick and Southampton Parishes and was called variously “Bishop Spencer School”, “St. Mary’s School” and “Tucker’s School”. The last and well-known headmistress was Miss Aradella Bean and according to a talk show caller, the school closed around 1945.The building is a Bermuda Government “Grade I” Listed Building, as of course it should be, given its heritage as well as its architecture, but its future is of concern. In 1967, the late Mr Leyland White conveyed the schoolhouse to the family grocery store opposite. The Historic Buildings Committee of the Bermuda National Trust has always admired how the White family had preserved the schoolhouse, but it is now in need of new care and attention. It is hoped that some organisation that is concerned with the history of education in these islands, with architectural monuments, or with the progress of Bermudians of African descent since Emancipation, might perhaps obtain the schoolhouse in perpetuity, perhaps for a museum on all the above subjects, a way-station in the long history of the Parish of Warwick and Bermuda.The schoolhouse was built several years after Emancipation, at the behest of the Rev Dr AG Spencer and the “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts” out of Britain, although Bermuda was and still is a part of those damper isles. However, in those days, one presumes that any natives of lands outside the waters of Britain were strange folk, foreigners in exotic and misunderstood parts. That prejudice did not prevent those in the “home parts” from risking life, limb and personal fortune to bring the Word of the Good Book to those in “foreign parts”.The connection between those in foreign parts, such as Bermuda, with the Bible and the Christian religion out of Britain remains one of the enduring associations between the Mother Country and its children of empire. Some as Africaphiles might, one would think as an step in decolonization, remove all traces of that religion from their lives, but such appears not the case and the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts, by said foreigners no less, continues apace.Religious instruction aside, education was, and is, the key to the future of all children in “foreign parts”. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel understood the value of education beyond the spiritual and in particular they focused on those in foreign societies who did not have the same rights to basic education, as did some other occupants of those countries. In the case of Bermuda, the Society, to their eternal (and perhaps heavenly) credit, concentrated on schools for the children of newly-freed slaves, imbuing in many a thirst for education and knowledge that has continued down the intervening generations. In that light, the small schoolhouses of the period in Bermuda are a much under-valued class of societal heritage and architectural monuments.A great friend of the African-Bermudian, Aubrey George Spencer was born of Anglo-German parents in 1795, the year the Royal Navy established its presence in Bermuda at Convict Bay on the north side of St. George’s Harbour. He was educated by the eminent Dr Burney, who refused to take payment as his pupil’s “classical attainments were so good, his Latinity especially, which never lost its force or grace”. For a period Spencer was in the Royal Navy, but eventually took the call to Holy Orders and missionary work. He first went to Newfoundland, which was deleterious to his health, and “he was ordered to try the soft climate of Bermuda”, where he later became its Anglican Archdeacon. He married into the local Musson family and “his services were great to the Church and to the cause of education and freedom in that island”. Spencer later became the first Bishop of Newfoundland and Bermuda, and later still Jamaica. He was thirty-five years in “foreign parts”, including Bermuda and retired in broken health to Torquay, dying on St. Matthias’ Day in 1872 (24 February, otherwise said to be the luckiest day of the year), a short time before his and his Bermudian wife’s golden wedding anniversary.The Warwick school should be restored and named again in honour of that true and good friend of African-Bermudians of the period of Emancipation, for, after physical release, there is no finer form of mental freedom than education. The school is also the finest surviving example of the eight such buildings promulgated by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in the first years after Emancipation in Bermuda.Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PhD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum at Dockyard. Comments may be made to director@bmm.bm or 704-5480