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The Double Springs schoolhouse is dying.

In a low, boggy piece of land across the road from a cement plant, the old building where schoolchildren once learned to read and write is busy falling apart.

Much of the porch roof has collapsed into rusty tin. The doors that once welcomed children now stand open to the elements. Gaping holes in the roof mean destruction is assured sooner rather than later.

“It’s on the way,” said Bob Carter, a Rockingham County resident and historian.

It has company.

All across the county sit historic schoolhouses in states of disrepair. Several are in similar shape or worse.

“One hundred years from now, they’ll be lucky if two of the buildings are standing,” Carter said. “In the long run, it doesn’t look promising.”

An inventory turned up 36 buildings . Once there likely were twice as many.

It’s a situation that chagrins Carter, who earlier in the decade did the inventory of log and frame schoolhouses in the county.

“I don’t think people realize there are a number of these buildings still standing,” he said. “A lot of the young people don’t realize what they were.”

The schoolhouses, many of which had but one teacher who held court in a single room, generally date to the late 1800s or early 1900s.

In the first half of the last century, they were phased out as the county consolidated education into ever-larger districts and schools.

Many were converted into houses or storage buildings. Some — the unluckiest ones — are vacant, the lack of urgency for maintenance spelling their doom.

Their presence, in many cases standing not far from huge modern schools, helps tell a story of the tremendous changes in education during the past century.

“It shows how far we’ve come since grandfather’s time, you might say,” Carter said. “It’s a huge change in just a couple generations.”

A few of the schools — Grassy Springs, now at the RCC campus; Bason schoolhouse on New Lebanon Church Road — have been restored as museums.

But for the rest, preservation is merely a wish.

Some are schools that served black students in the days of segregation.

“That would be an ideal thing to save,” Carter said.

A few miles from the RCC campus stands a former schoolhouse with particular resonance for Carter: His father went to school there.

The Sandy Cross schoolhouse looks different from many of the decrepit schoolhouses. In a larger building, it had room for two teachers, with a sliding divider that could break the space into classrooms or unite it for gatherings or performances.

Once rented as a residence, it’s now vacant. Some years back, the owner called Carter to see if he knew of any way to get help for the structure. Carter had to tell the owner no.

And most of the buildings don’t receive even that much attention. Instead, they gradually rot.

Their current appearance is in stark contrast to what they once must have been, places of laughter and learning, of bright-eyed pupils soaking in the lessons of the day.

The schools served their communities at a time when most children would go no further than the sixth or seventh grade. Those children would head back to farm work as they watched children of more fortunate families head on to higher education.

Photographs from the time attest to the seriousness of the mission.

In faded picture after faded picture, rows of children, solemn expressions on their faces, look at the camera, caught for eternity in the days before they began a life of toil.

Now their schoolhouses hide in plain sight, vanishing reminders of a vanished era.

“They’re just there and they don’t think about it,” Carter said. “It’s certainly part of our heritage.”

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or jason.hardin@news-record.com