Jack and Jill continue to fall down the hill. Peter-Peter keeps his wife cooped up in a pumpkin. And the patty-cake kids keep on clapping.

In the basement of the historic West Wareham School, which turns 100 years old this year, there are three giant murals depicting scenes from different nursery rhymes.

While the school shuttered its doors last year, many in town hope to see the paintings preserved as a reminder of times now past.

According to numerous sources, the murals were painted by Mary Clarke, an art teacher who worked in the Wareham Schools for decades. The year the murals were painted remains a bit of a mystery, but what is certain is that the murals were part of the early education for generations of Wareham residents.

The paintings are about eight feet long and four feet high and depict scenes from "Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater," "Patty-cake" and "Jack and Jill."

"I remember sitting in front of these giant paintings as a child and being intrigued by them," said resident and local historian Mac Phinney. He said he attended the West Wareham School in the early 1950s.

School Committee Chairman Cliff Sylvia believes the paintings were done sometime in the early 1950s. Clarke taught at Wareham High School in 1966 when Sylvia began his teacher career at the high school.

The West Wareham School, located at 1073 Main Street, was originally a four-room schoolhouse serving first through sixth graders. More recently, it operated as the West Wareham Academy, offering a therapeutic learning environment for students in grades seven through 12.

Last fall, the small group of students attending school there were transferred to the East Wareham Early Childhood Center. The school was shuttered and ownership was transferred to the town from Wareham Public Schools at last fall's Town Meeting.

The paintings are still in decent condition, and Sylvia said he would like to see them preserved. In agreement with him is Angela Dunham, president of the Wareham Historical Society.

Dunham said she was notified about the paintings from someone in the schools and was impressed with their size when she went to see them. She was, however, also dismayed.

"As soon as I saw the size, I knew we couldn't do anything with them," she said.

Dunham said the town's Historical Commission might have storage space for the paintings and might even be able to display them somewhere. She plans to meet with Town Administrator Derek Sullivan on the subject.

"They look like the illustrations you would see in a 1950s children's book," she said.

Dunham is also familiar with Clarke because, like many others in town, she had her as an art teacher.

Resident Melodye Conway knows Clarke because Clarke was her great aunt. She said Clarke was not only a prolific painter, but also designed the lighthouses across from the police station with her husband Roy.

Clarke painted murals in Onset and a Native American-themed mural at the Minot Forest Elementary School in 1967 that is still there today.

Clarke taught art in Wareham for decades and illustrated a book called "Glimpses of Early Wareham," which was published in 1970. She died in 1974 at the age of 71 and is buried in Agawam Cemetery.

Ken Semedo, 87, attended the West Wareham School from 1933 to 1939. (He went by Ken Smith back then). He doesn't remember any paintings, but he does remember Mary Clarke because, as you could guess, she was his art teacher.

"I had a lot of good memories in that place," he said.

Semedo said that when he attended school, there were four classrooms with about 25 children in each grade, 1-6.

The basement, where the paintings are now, housed a furnace, a coal bin, the janitor's office and a small workshop that a select group of students were allowed to use.

At some point between the late 1930s and and the early 1950s, the basement was converted into a lunchroom for students. The paintings were made by Clarke to brighten up the lunch room, according to resident Barbara Bailey, whose mother was a principal at the school.

Years later, when Semedo was on the committee to build the new high school on Viking Drive, he said the superintendent at the time told him the West Wareham schoolhouse "looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting."

Even though it seems the exact date the murals were created might be lost to time, that doesn't mean the paintings themselves must be lost as well.