Letter from a headmaster, 1922 Rosemary Collins
Deborah Walsh, curator at the Armitt Museum and Library, shares a letter shedding light on an important educational reformer with
Charlotte Mason (1842– 1923) was a teacher who became an educationalist and writer, helping introduce major reforms to schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She promoted the ideas of a broad curriculum for all children, including the arts and sciences, the treatment of pupils as individuals, and involving children actively in their learning. Many of her theories are still used today.
The Armitt Museum and Library in Ambleside now holds Charlotte Mason’s papers. As curator Deborah Walsh explains, they include a letter from a grateful headteacher that shows why her methods had a dramatic impact on education.
What did Charlotte Mason do?
Charlotte Mason was one of the prime movers in advocating radical changes, especially in primary schools. She was headmistress of a large infant school in Worthing from 1861 to 1873, then a lecturer at Bishop Otter College, Chichester, and later ran a private school in Bradford. While in Bradford she published several schoolbooks on geography, and in 1886 she published Home Education, a book of educational guidance aimed at parents.
This led to the founding of the Parents’ National Education Union, which within a few years had branches in most parts of the country, and several eminent patrons from the Anglican Church and the world of education. In 1892 Charlotte founded the ‘House of Education’ in Ambleside which trained teachers in her educational ideas and methods.
What is the document?
The letter, which was written by GF Husband, headmaster of Lower East Street Boys School in Middlesbrough, speaks for itself as a vindication of Charlotte Mason’s teaching methods. It starts by giving us a rather disturbing insight into the education of the poorest children in the most deprived areas during the Depression years of the 1920s, but goes on to describe the profound impact that the new teaching methods had on the school and the lives of the children.
Why choose this letter?
The Charlotte Mason archive is vast and, until recently, partly uncatalogued. It consists of more than 60 archive boxes plus a library collection. My staff and volunteers have spent the past few months ploughing through it in detail, and it was they who came across this letter. I think it was the single document that for all of us made sense of the whole archive, and the profound importance of Charlotte Mason’s work.
I would defy anyone not to be moved by the letter. GF Husband was obviously a man of great compassion, as well as insight. He paints a powerful picture of the slum school with its “unshod, ill-clad, under-fed” pupils. And he describes their education prior to the adoption of the Charlotte Mason methods as a “tawdry and soulless sham”.
But the letter is ultimately heartening in giving the most tangible expression of how her then rather revolutionary methods changed the lives of the most deprived children: “Now, teachers and scholars are bright and eager in their work. Irregularity and unpunctuality are reduced to a minimum and there is no corporal punishment.”
How did you acquire the archive?
The Charlotte Mason archive was passed to the Armitt for safe-keeping some years ago.
The archive came here because the Armitt and the Charlotte Mason College share the same roots. Both are situated in Ambleside in the heart of the Lake District, a place which during the 19th century underwent a flowering of intellectual activity. The Armitt was founded in 1912 and the Charlotte Mason College a few years earlier, both as a result of the existence of a longestablished scholarly community in the area.
College staff supported the
The letter reveals how her methods changed the lives of the most deprived children
Armitt as trustees, and students availed themselves of free access to the library. Therefore the Armitt was the natural choice of home for this important collection.
What other collections do you have?
The Armitt combines museum, gallery and library. The library holds about 14,000 books on the local area and its history. These include extensive collections devoted to John Ruskin and Beatrix Potter. It also holds extensive archives of the works of the political economist and social commentator Harriet Martineau, and has one of the best collections of guidebooks to the Lakes and a number of rare and early volumes, dating back to 1509.
In fact Beatrix Potter is one of the Armitt’s most important benefactors. Her interest in the library dates from her marriage in 1913 to William Heelis, who was a committee member. Potter’s gifts began in 1933 with 122 books from her late father’s library, but her most generous gift came after her death: more than 400 of her watercolours of fungi, mosses and lichens and archaeological studies, including some of her best work.
An important element of the Armitt is its photographic collection, which includes approximately 23,000 photographic albums, prints, portfolio work and glassplate negatives. These are predominantly related to the Lake District and include early landscape photography, images of working people and local buildings. The JW Brunskill Collection includes some 17,000 glass-plate negatives, the life’s work of Windermere photographer James Brunskill. These are largely portraits of exceptional quality, nearly all of which are named and date from the 1860s to 1906. These are of great value to anyone interested in social or family history.
The Armitt also holds a fascinating range of manuscripts, as diverse as plans for the Ambleside railway, Ruskin’s letters to his doctor and other personal and family papers, the Beggars’ Entry Book for Ambleside and various documents relating to the Poor Law.
Finally the museum also has an extensive collection of fine art from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the largest collection on public display in the UK of work by the internationally recognised 20th-century German artist Kurt Schwitters.