Catalogue description The Wennington School Archive

Papers of Wennington School collected by former pupils. Includes annual reports, financial records, school magazines, publications, photographs and correspondence.

Wennington School

Mixed

Wennington School, Kenneth Barnes, Wennington Old Scholars Association

Available on request

Wennington School was founded in 1940 by Kenneth and Frances Barnes at Wennington Hall, Lunesdale. The Barnes had been asked to establish a private boarding school for children whose homelives had been disrupted by war. The Barnes, who had both worked at the progressive fee paying school Bedales in Hampshire, were keen to bring progressive education to children of all socio-economic backgrounds. With only a fortnight to prepare the building, Wennington opened as one of the first co-educational boarding schools in the country. An Educational Trust Company was formed with a board of governors that included Tyler Fox, Alfred Schweitzer and Professor John Macmurray (Chairman). The School was fee paying, although parents were asked to only pay what they could afford. The highest fee was £99 a year and the lowest 12s 6d a week. In the first months staff were voluntary. When salaries were introduced staff were paid the same rate regardless of responsibility until a government inspection in 1948 led to official recognition by the Ministry of Education. At the end of the Second World War the School had to find new premises. Kenneth Barnes bought Ingmanthorpe Hall, an eighty acre estate near Wetherby and York for this purpose. After 1948 the School followed a grammar school curriculum and was nominally non-religious although the Barnes and many of the Trustees were Quakers. In 1968 Kenneth and Frances Barnes retired, handing the headmastership to Brian Merrikin Hill who had been English and Latin master from the early 1950's and for fifteen years Kenneth's deputy. By 1970 the School was in financial difficulties. It had failed to attract the required levels of fee paying students and was unable to provide adequate care to the high number of children with emotional and behavioural difficulties placed at the School. Brian Hill resigned and in 1973 and was succeeded by Fred Sessa. Despite a fundraising appeal, Wennington closed in 1975.