Monday 22 December 2008

Townley House Ladies Boarding School

Townley Castle, an annexe of Chatham House used for disabled men.
Also bombed on the 22nd August 1917. A photo showing a demolished ward.

I got the question below to answer last week and have drawn a blank as to how someone’s Grandfather could have attended this school, so any help would be appreciated.

"I would like to know something about the school. My wife’s grandfather attended circa 1891. Are you aware of any history of the place from that time. Am I correct in assuming that Townley Castle might have been used for the school?

The school in which I am interested is, presumably, a Jewish school. The head of the household was a Rev? H Harris ‘Jewish minister and school principal’ "

The closest Kelly’s Directory I have to it is 1891 is showing it as Townley House Young Ladies School, Kennet the misses.

I know it was an annexe of Chatham House before WW1 as there are pictures of the bomb damage there in Siminson's book that I publish, I will try to dig out some more info when I get time.

I have discovered a bit more for you Lynette Hallett's book fragments of the Ramsgate Schools available at £4.99 which calls it Townley House Lady's Boarding School circa 1836 to 1919.

It's not one of my publications so I Can't scan it for you for copyright reasons. I do have it in stock however it has about an A4 page on the school.

There must be an error here though as it was used as hospital during WW1, probably due to the 1919 Kelly’s Directory not being updated.

I have checked with an expert in local Jewish history and he says he knows of no Jewish connection and thinks it unlikely as is doesn’t appear in the Montefiore legacy.

Update I thought I would look through my own publications to see if there was an advert for the school, click here to see what I came up with its from Ramsgate Illustrated 1895. it only goes to show that local history isn’t a precise art.

1 comment:

  1. Hi there, I had relatives attending around 1920 - there was a separate girls and boys building called Townley Castle as opposed to Townley House. I've not found that there are any extant records, sadly. So it did exist beyond the bombings of the first war.

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.