Somerset Villa Finishing school at family home

DO you or any of your readers know anything about this place that once was in Bath?

Nigel P Wilby by email

» Editor’s reply: As readers will see, Mr Wilby attached a scan of the school prospectus; another page gives us the scale of charges for tuition in piano, singing, violin, French, and, significantly, typewriting and shorthand.

Normally BT does not concern itself with Bath, but we had a quick look into this one.

Somerset Villa seems to have also been the home of Mr and Mrs William John Edbrooke Webb as well as a school.

He was an accountant and an active member of the Liberal Party, while his wife Emma Jane and their three (or possibly four) daughters ran the school, which was open by the mid-1890s or sooner, but does not appear to have been in business after the First World War.

As the prospectus suggests, the whole family were very musical and music tuition and annual concerts seem to have been an important part of the school curriculum.

Tuition in typewriting and shorthand, though, were very “modern” for the Edwardian period and this, plus relatively easy terms of payment for tuition tells us that this was a ladies’ finishing school for the lower middle classes, whose pupils all probably lived at home.

We can’t find any evidence that it took boarders, but are happy to be corrected.

Violin and singing lessons made the young ladies decorative, but shorthand and typing, which seems to have been the special expertise of Miss Mabel Webb, would equip them for an office job if they needed work.

The family did have some Bristol connections.

By the 1920s another of the Webb girls was married to a bank manager named Ladyman in Bristol, and the 1911 census indicates that three of the daughters were born in the parish of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol.

There’s a chance that the (Edbrooke) Webbs feature in the family trees of some BT readers, so if anyone can tell us, and Mr Wilby, any more, please mail us.

Queen Elizabeth Barracks

WE read with interest the letter (BT, Aug 24) by Gil Osman relating to barracks back in the 1950s.

My wife went to Portway Girls School in 1945 to 1951 and I was in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) from 7th February 1952 to 28th February 1954 doing my National Service.

I well recall Queen Elizabeth Barracks (QEB) at Crookham where I also did three months basic training. As a member of the RAMC Association I was very privileged to visit the former QEB in 2007 prior to its development as a housing estate.

David and Dorothy Oates by email

John Hogg got in touch with us after being sent a copy of the June 29 edition of BT with its article about the Arnos Court County Club. John is the son of Eric Hogg, who co-founded the Club with Harold Hoyle in 1960 and was replying to our question as to who the glamorous people were in one of our file photos. The first person on the left he is pretty sure is Vic Thompson (a friend of his father’s), while he’s certain about the others – they are Molly Cummings (his aunt) and Shirley and Brian Haydock (his uncle). Mr Haydock was for some years the landlord of the Jubilee Inn, Long Ashton.

David Oates sent us some pictures of the Queen Elizabeth Barracks from his visit in 2007. In the postwar years, such huts weren’t just for servicemen and women, but were often used as schoolrooms, but also were squatted by homeless people in the late 1940s

Does anyone know anything about this school in Bath?