The Penblair Elementary School was built in 1909 on Schoolhouse and Cedar Hill Roads in an area known as Scrapple Hill. Wesley Mullin was the architect, George Zeitler the builder, and Cy Hoffman the mason. Charles S Mann named the school combining two Celtic words meaning “upland plain.” The school was closed in April 1932 and was soon auctioned off. Dr Walter and Mary Webb bought the school and converted it into a home. It has been a private home since 2018.
— From Images of America: Horsham Township118 by Leon Clemmer and HPHA, Arcadia Publishing, 2004.
The girls’ and boys’ outhouses were located on the two back corners of the property. The photo below shows the interior of the school after in closed in 1932.
Memories of the Penblair School
“My mother attended the one room school house on Cedar Hill Rd (Pen Blair School). along with two older brothers from 1929 until 1932 When the Dorothea Hughes Simmons Elementary School opened on Limekiln Pike. She thought it was really a big deal to have four classrooms compared to the one room school. The teacher’s name at Penblair was Miss Connally (who Mom said had very prominent buck teeth). She learned the Palmer Method of Penmanship there using dip pens and ink wells in the desks. In winter, it was so cold at times that class was held in the basement around the furnace to keep warm. It was a direct walk across the fields from the end of their lane on Lower State to the Penblair School House (crossing a couple creeks along the way. They ran home for lunch too each day. There was a bell on top of the school. Mom said the school was still there for quite a number of years afterward, but had been replaced by a home.”
— Memories of Sue Bibus as recounted by her daughter Susan Gilbert, November 2017