‘It ain’t over until the fat lady sings’. An interesting proverb. I mean, who’d have thought that four years further on, almost exactly to the day, I would be donning hard hat and reflective jacket yet again? Wikipedia defines this phrase as alluding to the fact one should not presume to know the outcome of an event which is still in progress. More specifically, when a situation is (or appears to be) nearing its conclusion, it cautions us against assuming the current state of an event is irreversible or that it is clear how or when an event will end.

Positive as I am, even I must admit that in September 2016 when we moved back into Tankerville, never mind way back in July 2014 when its doors were closed, I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me that the Central High building would be reduced to rubble within five years.  But that will indeed be the case.  And very soon.

The Eskdale gates now look very, very different from the way they did when they were used to launch the NHSG brand back in 2013.

“Life is flux”, said the philosopher Heraclitus.  “The way up and the way down are one and the same. Living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old, are the same.”  He meant that these things are the ‘same’ because they are all subject to change, arising from one change only to vanish into another.  All things, constantly, are in flux.  So should we be surprised that a school only built on Eskdale Terrace because the Tankerville building was ‘not for sale’, a hundred and thirty years later finds itself ‘on the way down’ again?  Yes, the only constant in life is change.  And things inside are certainly looking different now.

My guide was Tolent Construction’s Site Manager, Tony Davison, who I had met that day on my way to work, up a step ladder in the middle of taking down the Shepherd Offshore sign affixed to the NHSG sign poles.  I’d started talking to him to ask about the demolition schedule, aware NHSG were hoping to reclaim the building’s foundation stone and perhaps a bit of the Sixth Form Library too.  It turned out the time-scale was tight.  Tony told me the window for having a last look inside the building was only a couple of days.  At that point, I had no intention – and no wish – to go back into Eskdale myself, but, having passed on the information at NHSG, I found myself free just before lunch and phoning the number on the business card Tony had just given me.  The quickest way forward is always to do it oneself.  And I was feeling the ‘pull’ of the blog once more.  So that’s how I came to be in a hard hat again, one last time.

Not all empty buildings feel the same, of course, and it won’t come as a surprise to hear that my mood on January 25th 2019 was very different to when I saw the state of the Tankerville interiors when I finally got back inside.  Although it was a shock to see Church High stripped back to the brickwork, it was also fascinating to see bits of the Victorian structure re-emerging.  With Tolent only just taking possession of Eskdale, inside should have looked largely the same – minus furniture.  But Tankerville hadn’t stood empty without site checks for 2 and a half years. In the interim, Eskdale had had visitors.

Tolent’s strip-out work would clearly not be taking as long as planned.  As I could see all around me, Tony told me the building had been infiltrated for months by scavengers looking for scrap metal.  In some places, such as the flight of stairs I had to use every day while working there to get to the Head of Year Office, metal items such as radiators had been left lying ready to take away next time.

You may know that these days all the wiring is installed in the ceilings in modern builds.  But, in Eskdale, all the valuable cabling was long gone and the cheaper CAT5 cables littered the floors.  In places, it brought to mind wading through a mass of blue spaghetti.

The proliferation of purple still had the power to oppress me, despite time passing, but we soon reached the 6th Form Library.  Now, as when I worked there, the dark wood of this room felt like an oasis of calm as we opened the door.  Amazingly, it was still virtually intact.  Modern day thieves aren’t interested in old wood, it seems.

The Sixth Form Library, like its namesake at Church High, has moved position over time, I believe.  But, when it hosted the NHSG Brand Launch, it exuded a veneer of historical and cultural permanence.

However, devoid of its books and the re-located Central High stained glass window, the old Library’s dark woodwork was neither as ornate nor as substantial as I’d thought.  As I looked around, there was a sense of ‘smoke and mirrors’ evident now, which shocked me.

Between us – myself, Tony and two other members of the Tolent team who’d joined us in the room – we selected a piece of panelling by the window for preservation.  As we stood in the centre of the room talking, Tony nodded towards the green ‘pod’ thing in a recess with a quizzical look and told me they’d been finding them all over the building.  It brought home to me just how much ‘meaning’ relies on context.  One person’s seahorse is someone else’s oddity.

Before I left the building, Tony kindly allowed me time to explore a little further with my camera.  We didn’t go far.  I just wanted to venture upstairs a little way.  To the Main Corridor and Staffroom.  The first floor corridors at Tankerville and Eskdale are very similar in design, with both adding atmosphere to their respective schools.  In its time, the Eskdale Main Corridor was darkly imposing, but if I hadn’t seen an old photograph I would never had thought that now.

The sole inhabitant of the Staffroom now was an agitated pigeon, which found refuge in the Workroom when we came on the scene.

The Staff Workroom had been well-and-truly plundered for cabling.

Tony told me that, as well as cabling, lead had been stripped from the roof.  This was evident at the top of the building, where a pungent smell indicated water had got in.  I’d intended to take a last look at the Head of Year Office.  But as we stood on that corridor – where the stuffing seemed to have been ripped out of the walls – I knew I didn’t need to go further.  Time had moved on and so had I.

As I handed my hard hat back to Tony in his yellow cabin, my mind inevitably wandered back in time to Peter and his cabin at the start of this ‘Tale of Two Schools’.  I paused for thought a second time as I walked through the Eskdale gate for the very last time, my eye clocking the O’Briens van pulled up in the back lane to my left.  I was still standing – and smiling – but Eskdale’s future was not so bright.

And did my Eskdale ‘Unfinished Business’ have the ultimate effect of laying some of my old ghosts to rest?  Yes, in the end, I think it did.

I promised our Archivist, Rachel, at Tyne & Wear Archives that, as soon as I was in a position to do so, I would search for a number of old photographs which School had signed out on temporary loan but for some reason had failed to return.  When I learned the Church High Alumnae photographic archive had been returned to Tankerville Terrace from its storage crate at Quicksilver in July, this was the first job on my list.  It may be our school archive, but once it was signed over to the care of Tyne & Wear Archives at the Discovery Museum – a branch of The National Archives – in 1985, this is where all catalogued items should always be.  Not only are they properly conserved and in very safe hands there, they are also freely accessible to anyone who has a desire to view them.  Indeed, this is how gaps in the archival material first came to my attention.  I found myself both disappointed and not a little flummoxed when my search request to look at an early catalogued photograph of ‘Miss Dickinson playing the piano in the school hall for drill’ drew a blank.

Once the majority of the photographs were located, I made a scan of each image before returning them to a delighted Rachel.  Broadly speaking, they were some of the earliest existing photographic records of Newcastle High School at Tankerville Terrace, most likely signed out for a little exhibition to celebrate the School’s 120th Birthday.  Aware that, as a girl, Miss Dickinson had moved with the School from Jesmond Road to Tankerville, I found myself looking just that little bit more closely at what appeared to be the very earliest Form photograph, more out of curiosity than in the hope that I might find her younger self looking out at me from the aged image.  In turn, this led me to focus this next post on the second half of Miss Dickinson’s memories, written for the Jubilee Book in 1935.

Miss Dickinson first wrote about her long association with the School in an essay entitled ‘Reminiscences’ which was published in the March 1913 edition of the Newcastle High School magazine.  It makes fascinating reading and can be read in full on the Heritage website.  There are numerous differences to the piece she wrote for the Jubilee Book twenty years later, particularly in relation to her time as a pupil at Jesmond Road.  In this essay she very helpfully dates her return to Tankerville Terrace as a young teacher as 1899.

On page 52 of the 1935 Jubilee Book, Miss Dickinson continues the tale: “As I said before, one happy day I came back to my old School as a mistress.  The gymnasium, brass locks, glass panels, Wilson’s boy and a green cupboard that I never could draw properly were still there but things had changed a good deal.  Instead of 80 girls in the School there were 120, and classes had become Forms and Form I was now little ones.

“The building was smaller [then]; there were no labs, no geography room [the 1927 extension], no dining room … [a further extension in 1935].

“What is now the Botany Lab was then the Art Room – a room furnished with a piano and some chairs.  Drawing lessons took place there, music and singing lessons if the hall was very cold, or if the rain was coming in.  All the School from Form II upwards had Drawing at the same time then.  Form II stayed in its own room, Forms IIIb, IIIa and IVb were in the Hall and IVa and V in the Art Room.  This was on a Thursday morning from 11.30 to 1 o’clock.  The Mistresses’ Room was where it is now – downstairs – and as you came upstairs from the cloakroom [located then, as the toilets and locker rooms still were even in 2014, at the foot of the South Staircase] and went along the corridor, the rooms were in this order on your right: Form II (under Miss Miller), then Form I and the Kindergarten (under Miss Norman), then Lower IV (under Miss Ram, later Mrs Dilley), then Form III/IIIb together (my Form) [this would have been latter day Rooms 4 & 5 (my own teaching classroom), which I discovered during the restoration process were originally divided by a moveable partition wall], then Upper IV (under Miss Davenport, who was then the Second Mistress), then Form V (under Miss Siddall, the Head Mistress) and then Form VI (at that time, only two girls). 

“On the other side of the corridor were a non-descript room where the little ones sometimes played or where an Arithmetic division was taken [in 2014 the room was still being used as a Maths classroom – Room 8] – the hall and the drawing pantry, the room I’ve told you about already. 

“Downstairs there were no Form Rooms. If you started at the cloakroom end, on your right there was the Staff room, the Staff Cloakroom, the library, the front door, the Head Mistress’s room, the caretaker’s rooms and the stationery cupboard, the dining room [Small Dining Room] and, on the other side, the kitchen, the gymnasium and the Junior Cloakroom.

“When I came the only game the School played was tennis, but we soon started hockey [Miss Dickinson donated a form hockey cup in 1905 – the first trophy given to the School], first on the Orphanage ground, then on one of the moor intakes.  Our first match was against Gateshead High School who beat us 13 – 1 (I think it was).  When we started netball some years later, it was a game for Middle School and Juniors and we were the first school in this neighbourhood to play it.  Gradually Seniors began to play, all the Secondary Schools took up the game, and for the last two years our first VII has won the County Tournament.  Lacrosse and swimming are comparatively recent additions to School sports. [Miss Dickinson remarked in a School magazine that, although cricket had advanced sufficiently for a match to be played in 1905, play often left something to be desired it being ‘by no means an unusual sight to see a fielder taking the opportunity …. of doing a little original research into Botany or Astronomy, or of settling some disputed point with her nearest neighbour ….’  Cricket never became popular with the School.]

“Wartime brought some unusual experiences.  Did you know that school might have been taken as a Military Hospital?  It was inspected but was too small to be of any use.  During the summer holidays of 1914, it was used as a centre of St. John Ambulance work.  First Aid and Home Nursing classes were held every day – a sewing party met daily in Form VI and the Senior cloakroom was used as a store for beds, bedding, screens, jugs and basins and anything that might be of use in a hospital.  [The year before, Miss Gurney had raised a Women’s Voluntary Aid Detachment for the St. John’s Ambulance Association to serve the county, in addition to the Jesmond Nursing Division.  Miss Gurney was the organisations’ Commandant and Lady Superintendent respectively, and Miss Dickinson their Quartermaster and first Nursing Officer (Jubilee Book p.33).  For her war service to the City of Newcastle, Miss Gurney was awarded the Tyne Garrison Medal in December 1918.]

“Though we had outgrown the hall for prize-givings, we had to use it in wartime, so blinds (paper ones) had to be fixed to the windows.  These blew about considerably when the ventilators were opened.  During one prize-giving when the chief guest was speaking, Waterman [School Caretaker at that time] came upstairs to say that two special constables had seen lights shining out of the hall windows and they must be put out.  In those days, the Staff spent prize-givings in the corridor so he easily passed on the message to me.  The hall was lighted by gas and each bracket had to be turned off separately.  I reached the Chairman with some difficulty; he interrupted the speech and said: ‘Will the gentlemen who are sitting on the window side of the room kindly stand on their chairs and put out the lights over their heads?  Thank you,’ and the rest of the prize-giving went on in a room which had ‘L’air borgne.’  (Look it up.)  [So typical of a Modern Languages teacher to say this, even though, in her time, Miss Dickinson also turned her hand to the teaching of Scripture, History, all English subjects, Mathematics, Singing, Violin and Gymnastics, in addition to coaching Hockey and Netball as well as organising girls’ Swimming.  The sign of a true polymath].

“By this time, we had acquired another building – the Junior School and the laboratory were at 5, Henshelwood Terrace [bought by the Governors in 1917.  From 1913, Miss Gurney had leased the house as her own home, living there with her sister Nellie.  As she did at 16, Otterburn Terrace, Miss Gurney received boarders within her home at Henshelwood too and it was for this address that the first School House Prospectus was produced].  One day the fume cupboard took fire and we had the excitement of having a fire engine at the gates and firemen all over the building.  Fortunately, the fire was soon put out. 

“The next improvement was having a Lab on the premises ….. [created in 1927 by extending the back of the building out over the playground on pillars; some of the space below it became a Geography room].

” ………….. and the Junior School just across the road in Tankerville House [purchased in 1927], and music rooms instead of pianos in Form rooms.”

In the final paragraph of her 1913 reminiscences, Miss Dickinson confesses that ‘When I came [as a teacher] I made up my mind to stay two years, even if North Country girls were as bad as I had heard they were.  I have stayed fourteen [now] and it is quite likely that in the future it will be a Prefect’s duty to wheel me to School in my bath chair!’  And her prediction turned out to be true, if not exactly literally so, for she would stay at Church High as Second Mistress for another 24 years.  Known to the girls as ‘Dickie’, Miss Dickinson was loved by all and dedicated her life to School.  Dr Williamson, Miss Gurney’s successor, pays her a glowing tribute on page 59 of the Centenary Book : ‘Later in the afternoon [Miss Gurney] took me to tea with the beloved and redoubtable Miss Dickinson.  How fortunate I was in having her as Second Mistress for my first year of Headship.  Already greatly hampered by lameness, her strength of character was unabated and with her long experience and her mature wisdom she eased me into my job without my knowing it and kept things steady while I found my feet.’

It speaks volumes that the above framed image of Miss Dickinson is the only photograph of a Second Mistress/Deputy Head in the Church High archive, either at School or at The Discovery Museum.  Her time spent at Jesmond Road and Tankerville Terrace as pupil, teacher and Second Mistress undoubtedly makes her one of the School’s longest standing servants.  Thanks to the 1905 whole school photograph, we are able to compare the graceful, poised figure seated at her desk above with the young Miss Dickinson.

But what of that young girl called Florence who, accompanied by her two sisters, ‘tried three other doors, all of which looked like front doors, before they found the right one’ on her way to Newcastle High School for the very first time and witnessed the foundation stone of the new School being laid ‘in a place rather a long way off anywhere called Tankerville Terrace’?  The likelihood of a photograph existing of her are, admittedly, very slim indeed.  But there is just a chance that we have one.  For looking even closer still at that Elliott & Fry image of the younger children which seemed older than the others, to the left of the group, a serious-looking young girl with long blonde hair wearing a pristine white blouse caught my eye.  There is no way I can be sure of this, of course, but the dates do match.  How wonderful would it be if this was indeed the young Florence Evelyn Dickinson?

 

Strangely, there are similarities between the foundation of the original Newcastle High School for Girls and second time around.  I was always aware that Church High started off as Newcastle High School when founded in 1885 as a few of the girls and staff were too.  Indeed, as I’ve said before, the School badge never changed.  Many a person will have mused, as I did, over the whereabouts of the ‘C’ in the overlay of letters.  But it definitely did only say NHS.  So, because this blog is now taking the form of a Heritage discourse, I thought it fitting this next post should go back to the very start.

Just as the parent company of the new NHSG (the Girls Day School Trust) is London-based, so too was the organisation Sir Benjamin Chapman Browne wrote to on behalf of a newly-formed Committee in Newcastle wishing to provide an education for their daughters with a Church of England based ethos informing the curriculum.  A leading industrialist within the City and spokesman for British industrial capital at a national level, B C Browne was an important member of Newcastle Corporation and it is most likely owing to his influence that the Tankerville Terrace land was sourced and leased.

A High School for girls had already been in existence in Gateshead since 1876.  Originally a small school set up in leased premises (Prospect Cottage, Bensham), it had moved to a permanent site on Windmill Hills in May 1880.  Even then the surveyor had suggested a move to Newcastle, because to get to the High School from the west end of Newcastle and Jesmond, the fast-developing middle-class suburb of Newcastle where those with the money to pay were increasingly setting up home, girls faced a long daily trek over the High Level Bridge – at this time the main bridge over the Tyne – followed by either a steep walk or tram ride up to Windmill Hills.

Fewer and fewer girls were keen to make this journey as Gateshead became more industrialised and the social conditions ‘distressed’.

For some, the non-denominational ethos of the G.P.D.S.C. schools was also a bit of a stumbling block.  So when a notice appeared in the national press indication that the Church of England was intending to create its own schools for girls – along similar lines as the Girls Public Day School Company but with a religious tone – the Church Schools’ Company were duly invited to form a school in Newcastle.

Gateshead’s middle class families would have approached the Girls Public Day School Company in much the same manner ten years previously with Gateshead High School for Girls being the result.

However, it very soon became clear that the school they founded was on the wrong side of the river as the business men of Tyneside began to choose to move their families away from the dirt and grime to the modern villas being built in the leafy suburb of Jesmond.

Olive Carter’s History of Gateshead High School recognises this when recording the 12 years of the School’s first Headmistress, Miss Cooper: ‘Numbers at Gateshead High School reached their peak in 1885; after that, decline set in, slowly at first then faster ….. Miss Cooper showed her clear-sighted acceptance of facts by suggesting in 1886 that the school should remove to Newcastle, where two-thirds of the pupils came; but the proposal was not welcomed.’ [History of Gateshead High School & Central Newcastle High School, p.7]  The ethos of the G.P.D.S.C. school may also have affected its ability to keep numbers up, as Carter observes: ‘Certainly the discipline seems to have been fairly severe … There was an inflexible rule of silence everywhere and at all times, except during recreation; so strict was this rule that it occasionally even led to children who got lost in the school building remaining lost because neither they nor any other pupil cared to risk speaking.’ [p.20]

However by 1889 when a G.P.D.S.C. Preparatory School was finally opened across the river in Devonshire Terrace, Newcastle – intended to act as a ‘feeder’ school for Gateshead High School for girls up to age 10, this was the first attempt to try to address the troublesome issue of falling roll – there was already a High School for Girls in existence in Newcastle, of course.  And not just the usual type of school converted from a residential property either, but an architect designed, state-of-the-art, purpose-built school complete with a fully-equipped Gymnasium and a Science Laboratory.  Not surprisingly, the GHS Preparatory School failed in its primary purpose and ‘numbers continued to drop with increasing rapidity.’  [Carter, p.23]  By the autumn term of 1894, Gateshead’s two schools together contained only 191 pupils, which was when the G.D.S.T. first tried to purchase the Newcastle High School building on Tankerville Terrace.  But, way back then, they were firmly told “No”.  This didn’t deter them though.  As we know, they built a High school two streets away.

The Minutes of the Church Schools’ Company relating to the life of Newcastle High School can be viewed via Tyne & Wear Archives at The Discovery Museum [Cat. No: E.NC17/5/1].  The entry for July 1st 1894 [Council Minutes Vol 4 P.140-142] records details of a Special Meeting of the C.S.C. Council held at the Church House, Deans Yard, SW, on Friday 13^th July 1894 at 12 noon called by the Company’s Chairman, Rev. Archdeacon Emery to consider a letter affecting the Company’s School at Newcastle.  The discussion on record from that day reads as follows: ‘Proposal of G.P.D.S. Company to establish school: Read a letter dated 25^th alt. from Mr J. C. Tarver stating that the Girls Public Day School Company proposed to open a School in Newcastle on Tyne and that the Local Committee of which he was Chairman would be glad to know whether the Church Schools Company would be willing to sell their premises in Tankerville Terrace. Intention of Council of Church Schools Company: Resolved to inform Mr Tarver that the Council had no intention of abandoning their School at Newcastle on Tyne, and that it was hoped that care would be taken to avoid such a position, for the proposed school of the Girls Public Day School Company might create needless rivalry between the two Schools’.

Creating a new school using a successful, pre-existing school as a nucleus is, of course, established practice.  The recent merger between Church High School and Central Newcastle High School will have been broached in this fashion and, way back in 1884, Miss Hewison who ran a successful school for young ladies in Jesmond Road, Newcastle, must have received a very similar letter from The Church Schools’ Company Council.  I would love to know more of Miss Hewison’s school, but the only trace I have found so far are the brief references in the Church School Company Minutes and The Newcastle upon Tyne Church High School Jubilee History.  From the latter, we learn that: ‘Amongst the “first-class” private schools in Newcastle was one in Jesmond Road.  Originally owned by a Mrs Hewison, it had been carried on after her death by her two daughters, one whom had afterwards married, and in 1884 it had a good reputation in the city and appears to have been flourishing.  It was this school that the Church Schools’ Company proposed as the nucleus of their new school and on October 10th, 1884, an agreement for the purchase of the goodwill of the school was drawn up.  The school was to be carried on in the same buildings, numbers 54, 56, 58 and 60 Jesmond Road, and it was arranged that Miss Hewison [presumably the school’s Head Mistress] should stay on as House and Music Mistress and that some other members of the staff should be retained.’ [Jubliee Book: p.15 & 16]

At that time in Newcastle, Jesmond Road would have been a very smart address.  Nowadays, the road has been split into two with the middle section demolished to make way for the motorway ring road.  However, the first church built to serve the needs of the new suburb of Jesmond – Jesmond Parish Church – still sits alongside the road.  Until the erection of St George’s Church at the top of Osborne Road, the incumbent of Jesmond Parish Church was referred to as the Vicar of Jesmond.  There have always been close links between Newcastle High/Church High School and the Vicars of Jesmond which go back to as early as the School’s founding.  In 1882, Rev. Somerset Pennefather was appointed the second Vicar of Jesmond and his wife, Catherine, became a member of the new High School for Girls’ Local Committee (basically, its Governing Body) in 1884.

The inaugural Local Committee who brought the new school into being and acted as its guarantors was comprised of twelve people, half of whom were women: in addition to Mrs Pennefather, Mrs Emily Wilberforce (wife of the first Bishop of Newcastle, appointed to the See by Prime Minister William Gladstone), Mrs W D Cruddas (wife of William Donaldson Cruddas, industrialist of Haughton Castle, at this time Director of W G Armstrong & Co and later Tory MP for Newcastle, Chairman of The Daily Journal and High Sheriff of Northumberland), Mrs J Spencer (wife of John Spencer, owner and director of J Spencer & Sons’ Newburn Steelworks, one of the most advanced steel mills in the country which made the steel plate for RMS Mauritania), Mrs W Boyd (wife of William Boyd, a progressive engineer and Managing Director of the Wallsend Slipway and Engineering Co. who became the first Mayor of Wallsend) and Miss Hewison herself, who acted as Local Secretary (whose role it was to communicate with the Church Schools’ Company in London.)  Dr Ernest Wilberforce, the Bishop of Newcastle, also sat on the Local Committee as the School’s Patron, in addition to a further six men representing a cross-section of the most eminent citizens of Newcastle and Northumberland at the time: Councillor B C Browne, engineer and Chairman of R & W Hawthorn, Leslie & Co. who served as Lord Mayor of Newcastle from 1885 – 1887, receiving a knighthood in the latter year); Canon Arthur Thomas Lloyd, the first Vicar of Newcastle and the Bishop’s right-hand-man at St Nicholas’ Cathedral,  who would himself become the third Bishop of Newcastle in 1903; the Archdeacon of Northumberland, George Hans Hamilton, a great advocate of prison reform and previously Archdeacon of Lindisfarne; Councillor Thomas George Gibson, a businessman who served as Sheriff of Newcastle in 1881, Lord Mayor in 1882 and , in partnership, would go on to set up the Newcastle upon Tyne Electrical Supply Company in 1889 and build the Pandon Dene power station;  Mr C B P Bosanquet, JP, of Rock Hall, Alnwick, Vice Chairman of the Alnwick Board of Guardians (who ran the Alnwick Poor Law Union [Workhouse] and a founding member of The Northumberland County History Committee; and Mr E A Hedley, most probably co-owner of colliers Hedley and Bell in 1884 and a descendant of industrial engineer William Hedley of Newburn.  Presumably the majority had a vested interest in the School as parents of daughters.  On the opening of the new school buildings on Tankerville Terrace, Jesmond Parish Church was chosen as the venue for the Thanksgiving service attended by Helen Gladstone.

Jesmond Road was initially created in the mid-1800s to provide access to the City’s main cemetery in Victorian times; designed by John Dobson, it is now known as Jesmond Old Cemetery.   Designed by one of Newcastle’s foremost architects, John Dobson, the old cemetery is the resting place of one of the architects of the Church High building, Thomas Oliver of Oliver & Leeson.  His more famous architect-surveyor father, also called Thomas, is buried there too.

Owing to its link with the new cemetery, the 1884 map of Newcastle shows that Jesmond Road was originally named Cemetery Road.

Quieter now, the east end of Jesmond Road still stands today, as do all-but-one of the buildings that served as Miss Hewison’s school.

However, at the time Newcastle High School opened its doors in 1885, the fashionable thoroughfare of Jesmond Road would have looked much like it does in these beautiful contemporary postcards.

The new school was only situated in Jesmond Road for five years and, as I am now in the optimum position to really appreciate and understand as I write this at the start of the fifth year of NHSG, that whole period must have been a time of complex transition, change and adjustment.  There will have been excitement. but those years won’t have been easy for the staff (new and old) and Governors.  The present day position is identical: a new school started within the walls of a pre-existing educational establishment; new owners and leaders; independence exchanged for management from London; some staff kept on, some not; new branding and new staff hired; a mix of old girls and new; the building of new premises ‘just-up-the-road’ and then, eventually, the school moved lock-stock-and-barrel.  As I also know, much of the strain of this process will have been shouldered at ground level within the Jesmond Road building and, indeed, for these years references to the School in both the Church Schools’ Company Council and Education Committee are quite brief.  Indeed, other than handwritten minutes in log books and the Company prospectus, the earliest document that seems to exist is a 1902 advertisement for a new Head Mistress once the School was established within the Tankerville Terrace buildings.  There is also a direct parallel with the present NHSG here too, of course.  No doubt navigating such uncommon changes must take its toll on a Head.

The first ‘transition’ Head of Newcastle High School was Newnham College graduate, Miss Caroline Ackerley, who served for four years in the new premises.  The challenges faced by her replacement, Miss Eva Mary Siddall, were arguably even more demanding.  Girton College educated, Miss Siddall had the unenviable task of fending off a series of threats to the School from GDST: in 1896 when they tried to buy the new Tankerville Terrace building to use as their school; in 1899 when the Gateshead High feeder school was set up in Newcastle; in 1900 when the GPDSC bought land and eventually opened their rival school two streets away; and again in 1901 when they changed its name to “The Girls’ High School, Newcastle upon Tyne”.  Even Central High School’s own historian, Olive Carter, refers to these moves as ‘scarcely tactful of the GPDSC’ and records that ‘a year later it not unnaturally had to revert to the original as a result of objections by the Church Schools Company.  Thus the rivalry that would have been natural between two schools of similar type, housed moreover very near one another, probably owes a good deal of vigour to historical causes.’  Miss Siddall was successful in her task, but it is perhaps no surprise that she gave notice of leaving only a year later in 1902.

So what do we learn about the beginnings of Newcastle High School/Church High from copies of Church Schools’ Company Minutes in the Archives once the decision had been taken on May 29^th 1884 to establish a school in Newcastle B C Browne’s letter?  The first reference occurs on October 10th 1884, when it was minuted that Miss Hewison’s position had been reviewed and the reorganisation of her school decided upon.  The Council considered creating a new office of Lady Superintendent, a position which had certainly worked well at Queen’s College, London, the very first college to be created for women in England in 1848.  However, it was eventually resolved that ‘the Education Committee shall have full powers to complete the schemes for the reorganisation of Miss Hewison’s School – especially in reference to the arrangements for utilising the services of the existing staff of teachers – and that the connection of Miss Hewison with the school would be sufficiently served by her position as a Mistress of Boarding House and Teacher of Music.’  Plus ca change then.  What the Council were actually ratifying here was even more heavy-handed, however.  The minutes of the Education Committee which sat on the previous day show that in addition to requesting the lease of Miss Hewison’s property for perusal, an amendment had also been made ‘to exclude Miss Hewison from the privilege of teaching either directly or indirectly within 20 miles of Newcastle except in connection with the Church Schools Company.’ A distrustful, draconian measure.

Like Jesmond Road, Queen’s College, Harley Street, was created from adjoining houses on a residential street.  Originally only at No 66 (which became No 45) next door to the Governesses Benevolent Institution at No 47, the School later acquired the lease of the latter.  Today Queen’s College occupies four houses (Nos. 43 – 49) the same number as NHS at Jesmond Road, so girls at both of these pioneering schools would have had to negotiate lot of flights of stairs.  Although we don’t have any photos of Jesmond Road, owing to the similarity of structure, early postcards of Queen’s College, Harley Street, offer us an indication of what it may have looked like.

In preparation for the opening of Newcastle High School for Girls on Jesmond Road, we know from the same meeting that ‘the kind offer of Canon Holland to visit Newcastle and make a selection of such articles of furniture as in his opinion the Council should take over’ was accepted.  It was also agreed that ‘the fees for the ordinary courses of instruction should be £15.15/- for pupils under 12 and £18.18/- for pupils over 12 per annum’ plus ‘an entrance fee £1.1/- for all new pupils joining the school at Xmas and afterwards.’  The Head Mistress’s ‘salary of £180 (one hundred and eighty pounds per annum) together with furnished rooms, and a capitation fee of £1 (one pound) for every pupil after the first 75 and an allowance not exceeding £80 (eighty pounds) for service’ was also confirmed.  Once the School had opened, at a meeting on 23rd November 1885 it was resolved that ‘the proposed institution of a Kindergarten Department at Newcastle School be approved, provided that at least ten applications shall be received’. The Kindergarten instruction fees were set at nine and twelve guineas per annum with an ‘entrance fee of 10/6 in the case of little boys’.  Anyone surprised that NHS catered for boys at its outset will be even more shocked to learn boys were boarding at Church High as late as 1931.

The C.S.Co. set their standard high in the appointment of NHS’s first Head Mistress.  Miss Caroline Ackerley, a Clough Scholar at Newnham College, Cambridge, had already proved herself as a teacher in three placements after leaving college.  Between 1876-1878 she had worked as an Assistant Mistress at Devenport High School; between 1878-1879 at Ellerslie Ladies College, Manchester; and between 1880-1884 in her home city at Liverpool High School.  She was aged 28 when she took up her first Headship in Newcastle along with her sister, Miss Bessie Ackerley, who also lived in-house.

In June 1887, Miss Ackerley made an application for a grant of £10 from the Education Committee to start a Chemical Laboratory at Jesmond Road and in June 1888 she received approval for ‘the appointment of Miss Liddle, Mrs Blandford and Miss Simpson to give lessons in Music at the Newcastle High School, the remuneration being the fees paid by the pupils less 25 per cent.’  Miss Liddle is fondly remembered in the Jubilee book within the recollections of an Old Girl who was at Miss Hewison’s school and who stayed on after the Church Schools’ Company took it over.  From this account we learn that ‘for long desks and forms with no backs we got single desks, and instead of school hours 9 to 12 and 2 to 4 we had long mornings.’  From amongst the teaching staff, she mentions Miss East (afterwards Mrs Anderton), who taught drawing, and Miss Liddle, who taught music.

School politics and ownership changes don’t really affect pupils much, of course, so we will end with a starry-eyed young girl’s first impressions of the new High School on Jesmond Road.  This little girl, Florence Dickinson, would ultimately go on to have the longest historical connection with the School, far out-stripping my 33 years (to date) and even Miss Gurney’s magnificent 35 years at its helm.  Miss Dickinson’s essay ‘Reminiscences’ was published in the School magazine and re-edited for the 1935 Jubilee history.  It covers Miss Dickinson’s time as a girl both at Jesmond Road and Tankerville Terrace, but it is recollections of the former I wish to share here:

‘A great many years ago, three little girls walked sedately along Jesmond Road one September morning on their way to the Newcastle High School for the first time.  They walked so very primly that they were late, for the Prayer bell was ringing as they went in at the door.  They had tried three other doors, all of which looked like front doors, before they had found the right one.  The quantity of front doors was due to the fact that School was in four houses in Jesmond Road: No. 54 was the Head-mistress’s house, No. 56 had had its front passage blocked up and turned into a stationery cupboard, No. 58 was the Girls’ Entrance and No. 60 was the Boarding-house.  Having found the right door, the three little girls were hastily bundled downstairs to what we thought was a cellar and were told to wait there, which we did.  After a little time some-one came to fetch us and it appeared that we ought to have taken our things off because this was the cloakroom.  It was underground and rather dark and next to it was a pitch dark room that we all called the Beetle Cupboard.  It was really a coal cellar and, while we were at lessons, beetles were supposed to emerge from it and ensconce themselves in our boots.  Consequently we always turned our boots upside down and shook them before putting them on – think of what tribes of beetles could have a happy time in a pair of Wellingtons – but I never saw any beetle in spite of all our shaking.  Then we would all get Order Marks for being noisy!

‘On entering School via the front door of No. 58, a way had been made through the wall into No. 56 where the vestibule was now the stationary cupboard.  The front and back rooms of No. 56 had been made into one room and formed the Hall [the first Prizegivings were held in School, so this Hall was the likely venue].  Though No. 54 was the Head Mistress’s house, the first floor rooms were one big Form room.  There were about 80 girls in the School and I think six mistresses besides the Head Mistress [Miss Ackerley] and her sister [Bessie Ackerley].  Then there were visiting people for Drawing, Music, Singing and Drill.  We had a sergeant for Drill and the organist of Jesmond Church taught us Singing.  The Vicar of Jesmond came and taught one class – mine – once a week.  We did the Epistle to the Galations – I was eleven years old!  The Church girls went to church on Ash Wednesday, when we had the Communion Service.  The church always had to be found for us by Miss Bessie Ackerley, who accompanied us.  The Head Girl played the hymn at Prayers back then, and the march too.  The Head Mistress took the attendance of the whole school directly after Prayers in the Assembly-room.

‘There were five classes at that time – the big girls were Class One and the little ones Class Five.  After Prayers on our first day, one of my sisters was put into the Third Class (for they were not called Forms then), one into the Fourth, and one into the Fifth with the babies.  I was the one in the Third Class and my Form Room was upstairs.  It looked over Jesmond Road and had three nice long windows nearly down to the ground.  The most interesting seats were next to the windows, and, as we sat in Form order, and I started at the bottom of Class Three (which did not quite fill the room), I was the fortunate possessor of a window seat.  We only played one game in those days, and some of our mothers did not approve of it.  It was a very good game and developed one’s muscles well, but unfortunately it also tore one’s clothes.  It was called ‘Robbers and Bobbies’.

‘Lessons with Mademoiselle were memorable.  She always wore a brown dress with a black alpaca apron and very quiet shoes – yet she expected us to open the door for her when she was coming to give us a lesson.  We could not hear her, and our doors had no glass panels so we could not see her, and consequently we all began the lesson feeling cross.  She was also very particular about clean hands.  My Fourth Class sister told me that before their French lesson Mademoiselle always looked at their hands to see if they were clean, and if they were not, sent them to wash them.  Nothing awful happened if you did not appear again at the class.  My sister learnt practically no French while she was at School, as she always arranged to have dirty hands on French lesson days!   But Mademoiselle could be terrifying and my window seat could cause me problems.  On one dreadful occasion during a French lesson, Mademoiselle rushed down the room, pulled my chair from under me and made me sit by the door for the rest of the lesson.  Two of the blinds were down already and it was not a sunny day, so I suppose she could not put my blind down too.  We had all our French lessons almost in the dark!  On a happier note, although I don’t think we had milk at lunch time, buns could be bought.  Wilson’s boy used to come up every day with a basket; when I came back years later as a mistress, Wilson’s boy was still coming every day with buns.

‘While I was at School, the foundation stone of the new School was laid in a place rather a long way off anywhere called Tankerville Terrace [at this time, the only buildings on the street other than the School were Jesmond United Reformed Church and Haldane House.  The rest was open land up to St Andrew’s Cemetery] and sometime afterwards the new building was opened.  We came to the opening as visitors and three things were striking – you went down steps to the Gymnasium, the Form Rooms had shiny brass locks and glass panels in the walls and doors …. One happy day I came back to my old School as a mistress.’  Just as I joyously returned home there as a NHSG Head of Year in 2016.

 

Bibliography:

‘The Newcastle upon Tyne Church High School Jubilee Book 1885-1935’, by A.C. and F.M., published in 1935 by Andrew Reid & Company, Limited.

‘Reminiscences’ by F.E. Dickinson, p. 10 & 11, Newcastle High School Magazine No. 24, March 1913

Minutes of the Church Schools’ Company (Tyne & Wear Archives).

History of Gateshead High School and Central Newcastle High School, Olive Carter, 1955

Queen’s College 1848 – 1948, Rosalie Glynn Grylls, 1948

A History of Queen’s College, London 1848 – 1972, Elaine Kaye, 1972

‘The Making of a Ruling Class’: Two Centuries of Capital Development on Tyneside, Benwell Community Project Final Report Series No. 6, 1978

 

I have just recently received the very sad news that Maureen Bainbridge, Church High’s Receptionist from the 1980s to 2000, passed away peacefully in hospital on June 30th and wanted to take this opportunity to share this with those of you who may remember her.  Maureen, who had been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, would have just celebrated her 75th birthday on June 22nd.  Unfortunately for me, I didn’t learn of her passing in time to attend the funeral on July 17th.  I would very much liked to have been there to pay my respects to her, because I remember Maureen with real fondness.

Always immaculately presented, Maureen’s was the smiling face on the Reception Desk in the ‘old style’ School Office, which used to be directly to your right when you entered the room.  I recall there were two chairs to your left which faced it, where visitors could sit.  I vividly remember sitting there myself once  – presumably waiting to speak to Miss Davies – facing Maureen as she spoke to someone on the phone.  She was ringing up to the Staffroom in search of a member of staff at the request of the caller.  “I’m sorry,” I can still hear her saying in her rich, beautifully-polite voice, “but nobody is answering the phone.”  When she had finished the call, I remember saying to her, “Maureen, no-one is answering it because there is nobody else left up there”, it being well after the end of school.  Smiling, Maureen quietly but firmly replied, “Yes, but I need people to know that I have done everything that I can to help them.”  This desire to do everything properly was very typical of Maureen.  (Even if it did make Teaching Staff sound like they were all ignoring the phone!)

After Maureen retired in July 2000, she and I kept in touch every Christmas and on birthdays.  Once or twice I had the pleasure of bumping into her in Town – on one occasion she was with her close friend John McDonald, I recall.  You may remember John as Church High’s ever-smiling Catering Manager for a good number of years.  Maureen and John shared the same sense of humour and a love of conversation.  In a feature entitled ‘Behind the Scenes at Church High’ on page 14 of the 1997 Senior School magazine, the Office and Catering Staff were interviewed by four LV girls who reported that if the secretaries could work for anyone it would be for Church High ‘because they were happy there’.  Interviewing a smiling John in his red-striped apron on ‘Fishy Friday’, they noted he ‘obviously had a great love of his job despite his dream of cooking for Shirley Bassey.’  The Support Staff were always key to the warm Church High spirit.

I didn’t know Maureen had become ill, though I was aware I hadn’t heard from her for a while.  The years following the announcement of the merger have subsequently all rather seemed to blur into one.  On hearing of her death, however, I hunted out the last letter I remember having received from Maureen and was shocked to realise it was in 2013.  When I edited the Church High magazine, there was a reason the final five in the rebranded format were called ‘Voices.’  For me, it was very important that the voice of individuals was heard.  Because of this, I think the most fitting way I could end this post dedicated to remembering Maureen is to give her the final words.  Right down to its feminine flowered notepaper, the last birthday letter that she sent to me – full of breezy snippets of news of those members of the Church High extended family with whom she was still in touch – is so ‘very’ Maureen I’d like to share it with you here.  A kind, warm-hearted lady.  Maureen will be much missed.