Founders’ Families Join Withington’s 100th Founders’ Day Commemoration

Withington was delighted to welcome 14 very special guests to our recent 100th Founders’ Day commemoration as a group of our founders’ descendants travelled from far and wide to join our centenary celebration. Relatives of WGS founders Louisa Lejeune, Henry and Emily Simon, C.P. Scott and Adolphus Ward attended the event at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall from Canada, the United States and Italy, and from across the UK, to mark this significant milestone in our school’s history.

For the Withington community, it was an honour to host representatives from four of our founding families as we paid tribute to their inspirational ancestors who, 135 years ago, had been a pioneering force in creating equality of education for girls in the area, and whom we have remembered annually at Founders’ Day since its introduction to the school calendar in 1925.

A reception ahead of the event, held on Monday 28th April, gave our guest families the opportunity to meet each other and to share stories of their own personal connections with the school. They were also able to speak with Withington staff and Governors and enjoyed browsing through historic archive artefacts including the Founders’ Day red book which has been signed by every guest speaker since 1946.

Afterwards, they made their way to the Bridgewater Hall’s impressive auditorium where they joined our school community in formally remembering our founders through a programme of speeches, readings and musical performances under this year’s theme of Memories and Milestones.

In welcoming our descendants’ families, Headmistress Mrs Haslam described their ancestors as “inspiring people who had the courage and commitment to create new opportunities and to nurture a love of learning in a vibrant community… with the character and values they wished for their school, running as a golden thread from 1890 to the present day.”

Following the event, our guests – 10 members of the Chambers family (Louisa Lejeune), Simon and Caroline Barnes (Adolphus Ward), Andrew Simon (Emily and Henry Simon) and Paddy Montague (C.P. Scott) – spoke with warmth of their Founders’ Day experience, the valuable insights they had gained into Withington life and their pride at the legacy left by their ancestors, which is still very much embedded into the school’s ethos and values today.

Louisa Lejeune was represented at Founders’ Day by her great-grandsons Russell and Derek Chambers and a multi-generational group of other family members including their own children and grandchildren, who had all travelled from Canada, the US and Italy to join the commemoration.

Lea Chambers Volpe, Louisa’s great-great-granddaughter and one of approximately 70 of her direct descendants located across the world, said: “The descendants of Louisa Lejeune are honoured to have attended the 100th Founders’ Day event and witnessed the extraordinary quality of the students, staff and wards of this incredible school. We treasure our connection with what Louisa Lejeune and the other founders started in 1890.”

With the help of WGS archivist Hannah Brown, the family have meticulously researched their Withington links, dating back to Louisa’s involvement in the school’s foundation, including attendance in the early WGS years by Louisa’s five daughters, and later, her granddaughters. The family have been so inspired by their findings, they have set up their own website page laying out the Lejeune/WGS timeline from 1889 to 1921, along with a selection of memorabilia including old school photographs.

“Our connection with Withington has become a galvanizing force in our global family who can be found in Canada, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. We are excited to continue our involvement for generations to come,” said Lea.

Adolphus Ward’s great-grandson, Simon Barnes, was accompanied to Founders’ Day by his wife Caroline. Simon’s grandmother Adelaide was Adolphus Ward’s daughter, and also one of Withington’s first pupils. She went on to marry Ernest W Barnes who became the Bishop of Birmingham. Together, the couple built an enduring connection with WGS which continued for some years, including Adelaide’s presence at Founders’ Day in 1946 at which she was guest speaker and the first signatory of our red book.

Simon recalled that his grandmother spoke fondly of her Withington memories and how she had always cherished her WGS artefacts. He was able to bring along to Founders’ Day a diary with entries by Professor Ward and his wife during the years their daughter had been a pupil at the school in the late 1890s. He also shared with the Lejeune descendants an original 1898 Withington programme that had featured two of Louisa’s daughters in a performance of The Tempest.

Simon and his wife, who had travelled from Dorset for the event, had planned an extended visit to retrace their Ward ancestors’ footsteps in and around the Manchester area. By chance, Simon found accommodation at Ladybarn Road, close to Withington, which as it turned out, was located in the former home of the Wards and the house in which his grandmother had been born.

“It was immense fun to find ourselves, with the school’s invitation opening the opportunity, playing ‘grandmother’s footsteps’ along the byways of Fallowfield, Withington and Rusholme, visiting the church where my infant great uncle’s death is memorialised with a window and, above all of course, staying at the Wards’ Ladybarn Road house. We were very grateful for having been asked to such a historic and happy once-a-century celebration. No one could fail to note the strongly confident mood with which Withington’s young women would be moving on from this marvellously marshalled musical commemoration,” he said.

“And the style and variety of the Upper Sixth’s dazzling gowns was impressive. ‘Where Girls Shine’, indeed.”

Henry and Emily Simon, whose three daughters all attended WGS, were represented by great-grandson Andrew Simon. Henry and Emily’s involvement at the very beginning of WGS, along with their other philanthropic work, is recorded in a recently published book, The Simons of Manchester. Andrew says that he has been aware of the family’s link to the school for most of his life and “it is a source of much pride that Withington continues to be probably the very best school in the North of England.”

Andrew grew up in Alderley Edge and remembers as a young boy visiting Lawnhurst, which had been his great-grandparents’ home in Didsbury and a place where the Withington connection had continued during the latter part of the Great War. By 1916, Emily had handed over Lawnhurst on loan to the Red Cross for use as a hospital for wounded soldiers – and according to the school’s archive records, throughout the remainder of the war years, WGS made monthly donations to support a bed there.

Andrew added: “I was greatly honoured to be invited to this year’s Founders’ Day celebration. My great-grandparents and their fellow founders were remarkable people. They achieved much in a wide variety of spheres for the benefit of their fellow citizens. It is good that Withington Girls’ School continues to honour their memory and the values they sought to instil. It was a most impressive event in so many ways, perhaps most of all seeing this year’s leavers processing across the platform to be given their Leavers’ Books. The Head Girl Arabella’s speech was outstanding. I am sure she and her fellow leavers will go far. The readings and musical performances were splendid and Denise Parnell was a particularly inspiring guest speaker.”

In later generations of the family, Henry and Emily Simon’s daughter-in-law Shena, wife of Ernest Simon, was much involved in education as a member of the City’s Education Committee; and their son Brian was Professor of Education at Leicester University and a leading proponent of comprehensive education. Andrew’s father was for many years a governor at Cheadle Hulme School and on the Council of the University of Manchester.

Attending the event to represent the family of Charles Prestwich (C.P.) Scott was his great-grandson Paddy Montague, who now lives in Solihull. In his annual Recital of Founders, Withington’s current Chair of Governors Mr Malcolm Pike said that Mr Scott, Editor of the Manchester Guardian at just 25 years old, was one of the school’s founding governors in 1890, “retaining this office after he had resigned every other; loving truth, duty and the exercise of reason Charles Scott and his wife Rachel wished for the school knowledge through difficulty rather than success through ease.”

The Scotts’ connections with Withington continued for more than 60 years, from the school’s foundation through to the 1950s. Paddy explained: “My grandmother was Maddy Scott – C.P. and Rachel’s only daughter. Her two daughters – Rose and Rachel – both attended WGS and so did my three sisters – Isabella (known as Bella), Rosa and Meg. We lived in Heaton Road from the late 1930s. I have very vivid memories of WGS in the 40s and 50s under Miss Baine. These include the fathers’ cricket match and us collecting each year the school Christmas tree and carrying it home through Withington.”

C.P. and Rachel Scott’s commitment to education has prevailed throughout the family line, with Paddy noting: “All but one of my aunts and uncles went to university and the one who didn’t founded her own prep school in Oxford. I was surrounded by very strong women. The family now has six generations of university-educated women – and it all started with Rachel Cook and C.P. Scott!”

“The Founders’ Day event was very, very special. It is difficult to express adequately my appreciation for the invitation to attend and meet the bevy of descendants of the founding families. It was wonderful to be at the celebration and to see first-hand the excellent job all of you at the school do to give women opportunities in life. Thank you all. It was lovely also to see the leavers receive their books all dressed up – young women ready to face the trials, the challenges, the tribulations and the joy of setting out into the wider world,” he said.

Of Caroline Herford, Mr Pike told how she had been the first secretary of Withington and in whose home the decision to found the school was originally taken. Uniquely amongst the WGS founders, Caroline had no daughters herself. As then headmistress of Lady Barn House School, however, and seeking a suitable next stage for her female prep pupils, alongside WGS’ other founders, she was a passionate advocate for a progressive girls-only senior school in Manchester.

According to the Lejeune/Chambers’ family records, within 11 weeks of that first founders’ meeting, sufficient funds had been raised, premises were acquired and Withington’s first headmistress was appointed. Caroline Herford then went on to teach Biology at the school and from just four pupils when WGS opened its doors in April 1890, Withington’s cohort has now grown to over 750, with one-in-six today benefitting from our school’s ethos of inclusivity and diversity via means-tested bursaries.