Frances Mary Buss and her work for education

by Annie E. Ridley

“April 3, 1879.

“The Princess of Wales accepts our invitation to open our new buildings and give the prizes. I do hope nothing will prevent her keeping her promise. As yet I do not want the fact known in the school. I shall be torn to pieces, and have to fight over every examination paper and mark, because every girl, and her parents, will be so resolved to get a prize from the hands of our fair, young, and beloved Princess!

“I want, in the future, Foundation Day to be always a day of importance in the year. Twenty-nine years! Almost a lifetime.”

“June 28, 1879.

“How are you all? I often think of you, but the pressure of work now is hardly to be imagined! Independently of the Royal visit, there are the festivities of the girls themselves, in connection with the New Hall. Some French proverbs to be acted, and some extracts from Les Femmes Savantes, also the final scene in the Merchant of Venice.”

For a very pleasant little sketch of the school buildings I am indebted to Miss Edith Aitkin—

“The school buildings, which are the fruit of so much thought and endeavour, stand at the corner of Sandall Road, a few yards back from the main Camden Road. They are of dark red brick, and group themselves round a part of the original structure which is three stories high, and which culminates in a conical-roofed tower, from which each morning a bell rings out to summon the neighbourhood and all and sundry happily, not ‘unwillingly, to school.’ It is to be regretted that small and rather mean-looking houses crowd round too closely to allow the ordinary passer-by to form any adequate idea either of the size of the place or of its real dignity of proportion. The building falls naturally into two parts; first, there is the original structure, modified and extended, facing Sandall Road; and secondly, round the corner is the Clothworkers’ Hall, and the main body of class-rooms behind it. This hall, with its long, stained-glass windows, their tops breaking the line of the roof, and its handsome gateway of honour, is the most interesting feature of the building as seen from outside.

“The usual entrance is at the corner, in the very middle of the school, and the impression received is at once delightful and characteristic. Frances Mary Buss, the daughter of a painter, all her life delighted in light and colour. She was no ascetic, but aimed always at full use of all good gifts. As one enters to the left is the head-mistress’ sitting-room—the ‘Blue Room,’ reminding one that blue was her favourite personal colour, the colour she wore as a girl, the colour of the satin dress in the early Victorian portrait painted of her by her father. The tiles of the fireplace, painted by the elder girls, are green and blue, and, dare one say, Morris-y before their time. In front we see a stained-glass window, to the memory of pious founders, Dame Alice Owen, and Alderman Richard Platt. To the right is a handsome brass recording the main facts of the foundation of the school. On each side of this are doorways leading to the office, where visitors are received in the first instance, and to the library wing. Passing forwards, we mount a few steps and turn to the left into the hall. This was always Miss Buss’ pride, and deserves the exclamation, ‘Oh, how pretty!’ which nearly every one makes on entering it for the first time. Other schools have halls, some large and fine in their way, but I do not think there is any other so bright and cheerful, so warm with harmonious colour, so pretty. At one end is the main platform, with the organ—the gift of old pupils—recessed in the wall behind it. The long windows, with window-seats and high ledges on which are plants, pour down coloured light along one side. Some are already filled with stained glass, and the middle one, which has always been called Founders’ Window, because it was partly filled by the arms of those companies and individuals who have endowed the school, is to be completed as the special memorial of her who was, after all, our main founder. Along the opposite side and across the end runs a gallery of pitchpine. The walls have a dado of pitchpine, and are lined with smooth terra-cotta brick, let into which at one end, under the gallery, are two medallions, one a portrait of the Princess of Wales, to mark the day of her visit, and all that it signified, ‘with a white stone,’ as Miss Buss said. Five class-rooms open into the hall along one side under the gallery, five more on to the gallery, and others on to a corridor above. To secure quiet in the hall for examinations, etc., curtains can be drawn shutting off the part under the gallery as a passage-way to the class-rooms. These are bluish-green, and, with the flowers of the platform and window-ledges, give a pretty effect of colour. To the left of the platform hangs Miss Buss’ portrait, so that she seems to be amongst us still in a strange quiet fashion.

“To describe one class-room is, to the outsider, to describe them all. A teacher’s platform facing thirty desks, with a large slate or blackboard behind—Tobins’ pipes, and ventilators over the doors—this is the now familiar appearance of a schoolroom. More distinctive features are the window-gardens, the pitchpine dado, and eminently practical lining of smooth brick, on which numerous photographs display themselves. Miss Buss’ Roman visits explain the fact that very many are views of Rome and of classical sculpture. To those interested in the details of the school class-rooms take on distinctive features. In one is the challenge cup held for the term as the result of a singing competition amongst a number of classes. In another are copies of Raphael’s Cartoons. In another a very special and original fireplace decoration. In some we notice spinal chairs, or modified desks, recommended for special girls by the lady doctor attached to the school.

“A complete survey is a long business, and even a cursory inspection involves some walking, for we cannot omit to mount to the end of the top corridor to see the large drawing-school, with its array of casts, glass, perspective planes, etc. This is lighted from above, and contains over the fireplace a large painting by Mr. R. W. Buss, of an Elizabethan Christmas, throwing out a fine glow of colour. Several small isolated rooms on this floor also are used as music-rooms.