Olive Willis

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Down House, Downe

Olive Willis (born October 26, 1877 in Kensington (London) , † March 11, 1964 in Chelsea (London) ) was an English teacher and headmistress. She founded the Downe House School and was its director from 1907 to 1946.

life and work

Willis was one of five children of the school principal and later chief inspector for schools in the west of England John Armine Willis (1839-1916) and of Janet Willis, a daughter of James Coutts Crawford . In 1891 Willis was a boarder at Wimbledon House in Brighton, which became the Roedean School during her stay. From 1898 to 1901 she studied history at Somerville College , Oxford and then taught history for a year at Queen Anne's School in Caversham. She was a teacher at the Roedean School from 1902 to 1904, and then taught at a variety of schools, including Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, then in Acton, and a school in Chesterfield. In 1907 she founded a new boarding school for girls with her friend Alice Carver: Downe House. They raised £ 1,500 to rent and furnish Downe House in the village of Downe near Orpington, Kent. Charles Darwin used to live in the house . By 1910 there were 36 students at the school, all but four of whom were boarding school students. Willis himself taught English, Latin, writing, and history, while Carver ran the house. In 1912 Willis ran the school alone until in 1919 she got a new partner in Lilian Heather, who had been part-time teaching science and mathematics at the school since 1907. In 1921, with the help of an uncle and a loan from two parents, Willis bought 60 acres from students at The Cloisters School in Cold Ash , Berkshire , for £ 11,976. The cloister of this building was designed by the architect James MacLaren Ross and was built during the First World War for an order called "The School of Silence". Unable to keep payments on his mortgage, the Order was able to purchase this building and move the school there four months after the purchase in April 1922. In the summer of 1922 the school had 83 students, and by 1925 there were 118. In 1944 Willis transferred the school to a public institution. She retired as headmistress in 1946, but wanted to continue to live in the Hill House built for her on the school grounds. This led her chosen successor to move to a different school and she decided to split her time between Hill House and a second home in Chelsea, London. After living in retirement for nearly 20 years, Willis died at her 87th year in her London home. Her estate at the time of her death was £ 16,510.

literature

  • Ridler, Anne: Olive Willis and Downe House: an adventure in education, London, Murray, 1967.
  • Avery, Gillian: Willis, Olive Margaret (1877–1964), headmistress, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
  • Val Horsler, Jenny Kingsland: Downe House: a Mystery and a Miracle, London: Third Millennium Publishing, 2006, ISBN 978-1-903942-50-5 .

Web links