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Schooldays in Haslemere

Between the 1940s and 1960s, Haslemere had a variety of different schools. Private schools included St Ives, which at this time was a school ran by the Parents’ National Educational Union and as such emphasised the teaching of nature studies and the arts. The Haslemere School on Chestnut Avenue was opened on 22nd April 1900. It was originally designed for some 220 pupils and built by public subscription. There were also smaller schools such as Hillside School, situated for a time on the Petworth Road and run by the formidable Miss Welland, and Shottermill School in Lion Lane. Woolmer Hill, today the only secondary school in Haslemere, was built in the 1950s to satisfy requirements of 1944 Education Act.

Track 6 Not Everyone Liked Nature Studies

Credit line: Audrey Bayliss talks about nature studies at St Ives School.

Transcription:

Interviewee: Part of it was a PNEU school, Parents National Educational Unit, and some people didn’t like this nature study at all and people who couldn’t paint didn’t. I was good at painting so I didn’t find it difficult – I liked drawing these things and painting them in our nature notebooks. We kept it forever but not everybody liked it at all. I had a friend that went into farming and she hated this sort of thing. They couldn’t do it – some people couldn’t look at a flower and paint it or draw it. I would never have liked to have made my class sit down and do it but we did there.

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