Walworth early 50s -- new evidence

Pat and I recently interviewed someone with a good memory of the school from 1948 to 1955, though her memories relate more to the school and teachers in general than to English and what went on in the lessons.

She was taught English by Arthur Harvey for her entire time at the school. She confirms what others have told us, that Harvey had his favourites -- of which she was one in that class -- though this didn’t lead to any unfairness in marking. Some of the favourites joined Harvey in the Quick Service Cafe after school but not our informant: she belonged to an alternative group that met in another cafe, on the other side of the Old Kent Road, around the biology teacher, Eric Palmer.

Palmer was a quite different kettle of fish and he and Harvey didn’t like each other. Alex McLeod was associated with his group. Palmer taught frankly about sex and is said to have favoured free love (though his relationships were entirely ‘appropriate’, as we say now). But his main educational concern was teaching pupils about life. He was devoted to open air activities on the lines of the 1930s German hiking and health movement. He was associated with the Woodcraft Folk, took his group camping at their site and called them each by their Woodcraft name -- he himself was Fox. By all accounts Palmer was a thoroughly good thing and pupils benefited by his teaching and personal attention. Our informant regards him as one of the teachers at Walworth who had a lifelong influence on her (Harvey was without doubt another).


Another set of impressions from the same source supports what we’ve been hearing often, that Miss O'Reilly, the school’s first real head, was an ‘authoritarian’ who ruled pupils and staff alike ‘with a rod of iron’. What puzzles us, however, is that she was certainly a progressive in her principles: she believed in a school giving a social education as well as an academic one, through the practice of friendly and respectful relations; she stressed constantly that all pupils were equally valuable; she enthusiastically embraced the concept of an experimental comprehensive school; she introduced form meetings and a school council, and an innovative social studies curriculum that involved individual project work (not a great success, it seems) and a great deal of choice. She made unconventional appointments like Harvey and Palmer, and also Sean O’Regan the art teacher.

What’s the explanation? we suspect that her principles were more liberal than her personality could tolerate and that there was a real conflict between the two. But what sort of evidence would help us find out?

Blue plaque for Miss O'Reilly

Miss Anne O'Reilly was the first real head of Walworth/Mina Road interim comprehensive school, 1947-1955. Her niece, Pat Jones, and my colleague on the Walworth history project, Pat Kingwell, persuaded Southwark Council to award her a blue plaque for her war work (for which she was given and MBE) and her headship of two schools, Peckham Emergency Central School during the war and the new Walworth School after it.

The four-year-old Walworth Academy (principal Devon Hanson) hosted the ceremony, the plaque was unveiled by the mayor on the wall of the only surviving building (from 1905), Simon Hughes MP spoke and we all went inside for refreshments, mingling, and more short speeches, including by two impressive ex-pupils from Peckham, then David Harris from Walworth, Pat Jones herself and Pat Kingwell and me for our project, Social Change and English: A Study of Three English Departments 1945-1965, appealing for more information and stuff. Lots of reunions and, for Pat K and me, a chance at last to meet people with whom we’d had only email or postal contact.

Some decent photos will be up on the Academy site in due course; in the meantime here’s my petty offering.  (Click to enlarge)

1. On Mina Road facing the school and the plaque.  I'm sure there were more people than that when we eventually got inside.



2.  Here I can recognise on the right John Sparrow (English) talking to Simon Clements (late 50s and early 60s, English and Social Studies).  Of those present, John must have been the teacher who taught earliest at the school (1952).  I also see Mary Lou Thornbury who taught World Studies in the 1960s and 70s.



3.  I'm sure there will be a better photo of the plaque forthcoming. You can at least see Miss O'Reilly's dates, 1891-1963.



4.  Finally, the one surviving original building (1905: the Mina Road Higher Grade School) which only now can we get a decent view of, after the demolition and new site layout.  Here the only people I'm sure of are, on the right, Kim James, who I taught in the first and second year and hadn't seen since, and Bill Metson on the left, who we met and interviewed through the project.


I'm looking forward to some decent pictures taken by Tony of the Academy.