Looking back
Anne Lamb
Beginnings
On 1 February 1999, Carol Robinson and I visited the Church of England Records Office to look at the archives of St Gabriel’s College. What we found was compiled into an exhibition for the centenary celebrations; it also afforded us a view of the beginnings of the College, a hundred years ago.
A new voluntary college in 1898 required funds, and almost £7,000 was given in the first year. At the end of 1900, the £19,418 already donated included £2,000 from SPCK and £500 from the National Society. Canon Brooke gave and continued to give, and to persuade his friends to do so too. Offertories from Royal Holloway College Chapel, Dulwich College, St John’s and other parishes supplemented personal gifts, some large, some small, some anonymous. However, the bank balance in December 1899 was only £18 11s. 3d., and more funds were needed. Proceeds of a sale organised by the College in 1900 raised £42 11s. 4d., and three lecturers collected 16 shillings (their salaries were £50 or £70 per annum). Miss Bishop minuted the meetings of the House Committee: they include accounts and record a very disciplined economy.
At the end of the first year the new College premises were built and furnished for 69 students:
with 34 non-resident students, this made a total of 103. Tuition fees were £6 per term. A minute
records thanks to the Principal and Staff of St Gabriel’s College for their ‘zealous and untiring
efforts during the past year and congratulates them and the students on the results of their
examinations’. The College was inspected and the HMI advised application to the Board of Education
for certification. This was successful, and St Gabriel’s was launched.
The House Committee and the Principal were responsible to the Executive Committee, forerunner of the Council. On 10 November 1899 Miss Bishop reported:
“...the students are very much in earnest and very industrious but they don’t know how to concentrate, or to make mental effort. They will do any amount of writing out notes, learning by heart, working according to rule but to think out a thing, or to read it up and express it for themselves, is pain and grief to them as yet.
We read aloud as much as possible in the students’ evening recreation time. On Sundays I am reading Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progess to them as I found that the majority had never read it. On Mondays I read a novel or the newspaper, while they sew for the poor. On Wednesday we have a Shakespeare reading, the parts apportioned beforehand so they can be prepared. On Friday Miss Stephenson reads a novel to us while we do needlework.
Attendances at these meetings are, of course, voluntary, but most of the students come. The Shakespeare reading is very funny but quite hopeful and is some compensation for the dreariness of Pope’s Essay on Man to which the Department has condemned us.
We have begun to make a library and shall be very grateful for any gift to it...”
Soon great improvements in students’ work were recorded by Miss Bishop. On 26 November 1900 she writes:
“We had the pleasure of a visit from Canon Gore yesterday. He gave an address in Chapel. This morning we have been visited by the Archbishop’s Inspector, Prebendary Reynolds, who has assessed and examined the students. He seemed well satisfied with the result of his examination and especially with the notes of lessons on a Gospel incident prepared by students for him. Three or four of these he marked ‘Excellent’ and many more ‘very good’. ”
Daily worship and religious study were central to the life of the College.
Miss Bishop’s father was vicar of Martin Worthy, near Winchester, a learned clergyman who coached students for University Entrance. He recognised his daughter Matilda’s exceptional gifts. At Queen’s College, Harley Street, Matilda Bishop was taught and particularly encouraged by F. D. Maurice, its Founder. Her headship of Oxford High School led to her appointment as Principal of Royal Holloway College when it opened in 1887. Miss Bishop respected the stated intention of the Founders ‘that the domestic life of the College should accord with an orderly Christian household.’ Ten years later some members of the Council pressed for diversity of worship in the newly built Chapel. Loyal to the Church of England tradition expressed in Holloway College’s foundation statutes, Miss Bishop could not approve or adopt such change. Her resignation in 1897 was ‘an unspeakable sorrow’ to others as well as to herself.
Work at the Clapham Pupil-Teachers’ Centre was followed by four months as temporary Principal of King’s College, London. During that time Matilda Bishop met Charles Edward Brooke, vicar of St John the Divine.
Canon Brooke, a pioneer of Church schools south of the Thames and a member of the London School Board, asked Miss Bishop what she would really like to do next. Her reply: to lead a Church of England College where young women could train to become teachers, but she ‘supposed such posts were always filled by clergymen’.
The foundation stone of St Gabriel’s College was laid on 14 July 1899, but for the first year everyone worked from houses in Denmark Hill and Vassall Road. In September 1900 the College moved into the new building at Cormont Road where its work flourished and expanded until 1975, except for wartime evacuations. Annual letters chronicle the life of the College. Year Secretaries, Dedication Day and an autumn reunion strengthened the lasting friendships evident in the memories recorded here. Qualities of character, mind and personal devotion, outstanding in both Canon Brooke and Miss Bishop, set the tone of community life at St Gabriel’s. No denominational qualification was required for admission, and the Student Council was established from the start.
On 1 July 1911, Charles Edward Brooke died. On l July 1913, he was remembered at the 7 a.m. celebration of Holy Communion in St Gabriel’s Chapel. The Principal spent a busy morning starting examinations, interviewing, and working in her office. That afternoon, aged seventy-one years, she died. Her body rested at St Gabriel’s until the funeral. From the College Chapel, the coffin was carried to the Church of St John the Divine.
“Who that took part in that silent muster in the College Garden can ever forget its pathos, its simple dignity? Headed by the Cross and the white-robed clergy, followed by her sister, the staff and students, the latter bearing in their hands the lovely flowers which had come from far and near, she passed for the last time through her College gates. As the grief-stricken procession wound its way through the streets to the Church, the passers-by stopped and saluted, and even the little errand boys bared their heads.”
Matilda Ellen Bishop: a memoir by Alice Luxton, her sister
Miss Florence Johnson, among the first of Miss Bishop’s appointments and her right hand, became Principal.
St Gabriel’s spent the years from 1914 to 1918 at Culham College, empty of young men students enlisted to fight the war. The St Gabriel’s College building at Cormont Road became a military hospital. During the Second World War the College was evacuated again, this time to Doncaster, until studies could be resumed in Camberwell for thirty remarkable years.
The College expanded to meet the post-war demand for teachers. Buildings were added, curricular developments initiated and many adjustments made to embrace social and educational changes.
In all, from 1899 to 1976, some 5,536 students passed the College Certificate course. Of these, 31 gained B.Ed. degrees and 17 completed their degrees at Goldsmiths.
From my first visit, the atmosphere of St Gabriel’s struck me as exceptionally warm, welcoming and interesting. I arrived to join the Council, introduced by Miss Verini, formerly Principal of Hughes Hall, Cambridge (PGCE) and, like Miss Bishop, the daughter of a learned clergyman, vicar of Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire. Meetings took place in the Council Room or the Exhibition Room among the marvellous pictures hung there. Carols in Chapel; vital communications in the Principal’s study; excitement at the new Dance and Drama Studio; the practicalities, poetic rhythm and parable of the Pottery; the Library named after Miss Bishop; all portrayed high quality in their distinctive ways. It was an immense privilege to be thought capable of contributing anything to this remarkable community. Prayer, thought and work were at the heart of its strength, style and generous spirit. When problems occurred, there was good will to cope with and sometimes to solve them.
Ending
The Department of Education had become increasingly powerful in the 1960s and 1970s. Teachers’ and lecturers’ salaries and students’ grants were funded by central or local government. ‘Discussion’ documents blew clouds of change over Higher Education. Small was not thought beautiful. Statistics became more important than the ideas and values cherished in communities capable of adaptation and growth in their living traditions. Graphs providing criteria of evaluations were regarded as indisputable evidence: survival depended on size, not on the quality of work.
Notwithstanding its voluntary, independent origin, St Gabriel’s was hamstrung. Post-war expansion at the behest of Government was led and funded through the DES out of taxation. Students expected their fees to be paid when they were accepted for a teaching course. The Church of England had no effective plan for small colleges individually, but concentrated on protecting the bigger ones such as York and Chester. Conferences and consultations were arranged and attended. Refusal to amalgamate would have left students stranded before completing their courses (some now for four years) and staff without posts or opportunity for redundancy: ‘early retirement’. We listened to Eric Briault of the ILEA and considered various possibilities. To Goldsmiths we went, and were welcomed.
A wise and fair-minded Charity Commissioner recognised the essentially voluntary ingredient of St Gabriel’s Foundation and protected it from being completely swallowed by the DES on behalf of Goldsmiths. Peter Beesley, solicitor to St Gabriel’s and to the National Society, proved an excellent adviser. Our situation did not go unnoticed by other small colleges. The funds retrieved enabled the St Gabriel’s Trust to be set up under a Charity Commission Scheme requiring income from residual capital to be used according to the principles of the Church of England.
Miss Blackburn, the fifth and last Principal, was among the first Trustees. More than half her life has been engaged with St Gabriel’s. Appointed at Doncaster in 1945 as lecturer in English, Miss Blackburn served with foresight, intellectual distinction, common sense, unfailing good humour and consummate gentleness throughout. For her, for all of us, the closure of the College was another ‘unspeakable sorrow’.
Continues... Looking Forward
