In the last 150 or so years, there were many private schools in Watford. One such school, in a detached property in Loates Lane, was Fairfield House Girls’ Collegiate School.
Its principal, Lucy Sell, prided herself that there was no one to whom the mental and moral training of young ladies could be more safely entrusted than to her. Born in Leighton Buzzard in 1844, she came to Watford in her 20s to take up the post of resident English governess at Fairfield House. John Walker, a retired accountant, was head of the school. By her mid-40s, she had become head of the then ‘desirable’ ladies’ boarding and day school and kindergarten.
Whilst ensuring the comfort of boarding pupils, she believed in firm discipline. In the early 1890s, the school had 16 boarders, mainly teenagers from London, Buckinghamshire, Cheltenham, Cheshire, Wales, Paris and as far away as Shanghai. Five resident staff attended to the girls’ needs, and maintained the building and grounds.
The house was of a modest size, surrounded by well-maintained gardens, with a lawn tennis court and bowling lawn. The ‘sanitary conditions’ of the building were claimed to be ‘most perfect’ and the ‘natural salubrity of the locality particularly healthy’.
The curriculum included English, French, German, Latin, Italian, painting and drawing, botany, zoology, music, dancing, drill and elocution. Standard fees included English, French and Latin. Other subjects attracted additional fees. Classes were held by ‘highly certificated resident governesses’, three of whose children attended the school, together with a large staff of visiting masters. The potentially wide variety of subjects on the curriculum meant that care was taken so pupils were ‘soundly instructed, not merely receiving a smattering of all’. Cramming was considered injurious and pupils needing help with their studies received individual assistance.
Girls were prepared for the Oxford and Cambridge Local and Cambridge Higher Local exams, as well as the Kensington Science & Art and Trinity College music exams. Miss Sell noted that of the 27 pupils who took exams in 1889-90, 25 passed.
When the girls ventured into London, always by prior arrangement, escorts were provided to and from London stations. Miss Sell ensured the comfort, safety and instruction of those entrusted to her care, leaving no stone unturned.
By her mid-60s she was Joint Principal of Gartlet, a ladies’ boarding and day school at 38 Clarendon Road, where the Gartlet Road Junction is now; a few minutes’ walk from Fairfield House. She lived on the premises with her unmarried sisters Emily and Eliza, both of independent means. Also living at the property was maths mistress Alice Bailey from Thornton Heath. Miss Sell eventually retired to East Preston in Sussex and died in 1921.
By the outbreak of World War One, sisters Bertha and Jessie Goadby BA, alongside whom Lucy Sell had been Joint Principal, continued in their roles at Gartlet, which by then had a kindergarten and additional preparatory classes for girls and boys.
Bertha, Jessie and their brother Frederic were the children of former school mistress Elizabeth Goadby who lost her husband before she was 30 years of age. She later married Edward Chater, a local pharmaceutical chemist. Daughter Bertha held the National Farmers’ Union Higher Certificate and would have been responsible for boarders spending as much time as possible out of doors; one of the school’s stated goals. I have little doubt that she would have taught them the cultivation of fruit and vegetables in the school’s extensive grounds. She had also received training in the Froebel System, in which early years’ education comprised ‘freedom with guidance’; children learning at their own pace and developing autonomy.
At that time, Gartlet also offered music, art, drilling, gymnastics and dancing. The sisters prided themselves on the special attention they gave to foreign languages.
By 1931, Miss M. Bellman, MA (Oxon) was Principal. Her aim was to provide ‘a thoroughly efficient and modern education’. Pupils were prepared for the Oxford School Certificate, London Matriculation and University Entrance and Scholarship Examinations, as well as the examinations of the Associated Board of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music. Miss Bellman was keen to promote the ‘large and airy school’ with its ‘good gymnasium and garden’ and paid ‘great attention to the health and physical development of the girls.’
A continuation of the history of Gartlet School, following its 1948 move to Baynards in Nascot Wood Road to its eventual closure in 1965, can be found in my earlier Watford Observer article by searching Watford Observer, Gartlet School and my name.
Lesley Dunlop is the daughter of the late Ted Parrish, a well-known local historian and documentary filmmaker. He wrote 96 nostalgic articles for the ‘Evening Post-Echo’ in 1982-83 which have since been published in ‘Echoes of Old Watford, Bushey & Oxhey’, available at www.pastdayspublishing.com and Bushey Museum. Lesley is currently working on ‘Two Lives, Two World Wars’, a companion volume that explores her father’s and grandfather’s lives and war experiences, in which Watford, Bushey and Oxhey’s history will take to the stage once again.
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