Melksham Times Past

A column about days gone by in Melksham by local historian Lisa Ellis

Beltane: The Robinson Crusoe School (part 1)

Deeper dives into historic backgrounds are often inspired by casual questions.

These trigger a closer look that often reveal amazing stories. A few years ago, I was asked if I had information about Beltane from a former student. He was asking if there were other students he could be in touch with. Scratching the surface and making public inquiries lead to nothing more than an apology in response.

Not only were there no takers, but the local history of Beltane seemed buried, which left more questions than answers. I basically knew that it was opened in Shaw Hill House in 1939 and closed in 1952 when the junior department transferred to High Canons, near Barnet, Hertfordshire. The senior department had moved there two years prior.

The Heathcote family owned several properties in Melksham. Rev Thomas Heathcote (1789-1859) resided in Shaw Hill House and passed the home to his son, magistrate Thomas Jenkyns Heathcote (1817-1886), who, in 1871, established the site for a new school. It was then sold at auction following the younger Heathcote’s death and used as a private residence.

Following a 1901 accidental carriage death in Massachusetts of shipping company magnet, Frederic Warren of Liverpool, his widow, Margaret Maxwell (Langton) Warren (1862-1942) purchased the property. She earned an OBE for her Red Cross volunteer work during World War One.

Shaw Hill House was then put up for auction in 1938 when she moved to Monks Park and later Gifford Hall.

This was basically what I knew leading up to the establishment of Beltane School in Melksham, and it would have remained that way had it not been for a recent email enquiry from the grandson of Gay Bennett, a former student who died a few months ago. She possessed a list that had been compiled of her contemporaries, students and teachers, for a 60th reunion in 2000; a list that closely mirrors a list of my own transcription of the 1939 National Health Register, minus retractions due to Data Protection.

The flood gates opened. Although it’s early stages and going to take a lot more research to uncover more details, I am sharing some of this now while it still fits within the article space allowed to me here.

Beltane, named for the traditional May Day festival, was founded in Wimbledon by English progressives Joan and Andrew Tomlinson and German educationalists Ilsa and Ernst Bulova, who had financial backing of American relatives through Bulova Watches and were living in England in exile. The school initially comprised 30 German and Austrian emigrant children, many previously taught by the Bulovas in Berlin, with an equal number of English children.

By 1937 there were 23 teachers and 200 students. At this point, Beltane was primarily a day school, but offered places for 60 boarding students. It was based on Montessori education, with children at the school having almost total freedom to choose what and when they studied; it was progressive and co-educational.

In January, 1939, the Principal, Geoffrey Brook, placed an advert announcing an agricultural branch of Beltane to “… open in the Summer Term 1939 near Melksham, Wilts, in high healthy country.

Numbers will be limited to 50 and at the onset the upper age limit will be 12 years. In addition to the usual curriculum opportunities for riding and agricultural and horticultural studies will be provided within the 33 acres owned by the school. Inclusive fees will be not more than £100 per autumn.”

This was followed up by another, “Shaw Hill House is to be opened as a day and boarding school in May next, when it is expected that there will be at the outset, an attendance of some 25 children. The school will be a branch of the Beltane School at Wimbledon which is run on progressive and co-educational lines, and, owing to it position in the country and its spacious grounds, it will be able to arrange for children to study farming and market garden practice.”

Then war broke out.

In December, 1939, it was announced, “The Beltane School has now joined its country branch at Shaw Hill, Melksham, Wilts. 180 boys and girls already in residence. Room for more at all ages. Own farm produce. School work proceeding without interruption.”

After the school moved to Wiltshire, the original site in Wimbledon was used as an internment camp for German detainees, also referred to as “Beltane School”. The camp held both Nazis and holocaust survivors together.

Beltane House, taking its name from the school, was built in the grounds of the school and provided accommodation for staff. The school itself was situated in the manor house, Shaw Hill House.

Outbuildings of the old dairy were spruced up and used for cows and chickens; newspapers referred to the venture as the “Robinson Crusoe School.”

There were notable students and staff who were progressive and pacifist; authors, mathematicians, artists, historians. Some came on the Kindertransport and were Jews escaping Nazi-occupied Germany. Links to C S Lewis and Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones form part of a story to be continued next issue.

Pictured: Shaw Hill House, as a residence c1905