The existence of St. Hilda’s College at Cheltenham made it convenient, if not imperative, to find exercise for the energy there inspired and directed, and to supply classes for practice. To keep this stream of energy within her own guidance for a longer period than the time of training involved, it was necessary to have scope for it at hand. Even the great and growing College was not large enough to employ all the workers it trained, and the Principal was ever alive to the necessity of having a certain number of teachers from outside, bringing with them fresh ideas and methods.
The Kindergarten was the first addition to the Ladies’ College proper to need such young helpers as Miss Beale now had at her disposal. It began, like Miss Beale’s other creations, without a local habitation of its own in 1876. The College, owing to the quick perception of its Lady Principal, who was sensitive to each fresh tendency in education, was one of the first schools in England to avail itself of the Kindergarten mistresses trained by Madame Michaelis, who began her work in her own house at Croydon as early as 1874.
Miss Beale at once secured a mistress, and on her arrival a number of little boys and girls were immediately found to constitute a Kindergarten in Miss Beale’s own drawing-room. ‘The’ drawing-room, as she always called it, did not well bear out its title. As a baby-class room it looked well. Morris’s daisy and columbine paper, then a new thing, was on the walls, to suggest the thought, which was probably correct, that in first choosing it Miss Beale had already an intention of beginning a Kindergarten, though she did not find it advisable to mention it then to the Council. Some of the younger teachers in College helped a little with this baby-class. The system and organisation, the carefully trained head, all seemed rather alarming in those days when Froebelian ideas and German methods were little known in England.
As early as 1876 there were twenty-five children in the Kindergarten, for which a classroom had to be found in the College. In 1881 Miss Welldon came to Cheltenham as head of the Kindergarten. Hers was one of the first appointments made by the Croydon Kindergarten Company, which had been founded in 1876, with Madame Michaelis as Principal.
In 1882 the new room, purposely built and fitted for a Kindergarten, was opened. It was much enlarged in 1887. But soon again more scope was needed for the large number of students who now flocked to Cheltenham. Miss Beale could not bear to let one of these escape her. She recognised their needs, she saw their possible value. There were then very few places in England where they could be trained; the demand for Kindergarten mistresses daily increased. The immediate difficulty was met in 1889 by the establishment of a Kindergarten school in connection with St. Stephen’s Church in Cheltenham, supported by the vicar of the parish and a few voluntary contributors. This was staffed by Kindergarten students of the Ladies’ College. Fifty-seven children actually appeared in the school the first day, and the numbers rapidly increased in spite of the fact that each child paid twopence weekly. Five years later College students penetrated into a still poorer school at Naunton, a hamlet adjoining the town of Cheltenham. In 1896 the infant school of the parish of Holy Trinity in the town invited teachers from the College.
In 1889 Cambray House was offered for sale. Miss Beale, who had a strong lingering affection for this first home of her school, had with regret seen it ‘alienated to barbarian boys,’ the trees cut down, and the garden turned into an asphalted playground. The building was well fitted for the school purposes for which it had been adapted and long used. There was enough space in the part which had not been altered, and which was not wanted for a day-school, to be utilised as a boarding-house. Miss Beale seized the chance she saw of opening a school which should serve the double purpose of taking overflow pupils or others for whom, for many reasons, the Ladies’ College was not suited, and of affording an opening under her own eye for some of the teachers she was training. The rules for admission, discipline, etc., were identical with those of the College. By this time, too, she saw the use of the racquet-courts and tennis-grounds. It was a great satisfaction to get back this house. She wrote of it to Miss Arnold:—
‘I dare not take any extra fatigue, as I have so much on my hands—I must try to be alone for a while. I have just bought back the old Cambray House in which I began thirty-one years ago. I want a second Miss Wilderspin, I have got to put it in order and furnish by May.... I heard Canon Body at All Saints, Margaret Street, last Friday. It was a very good sermon, and seemed to fit in well with the thoughts that came to me, as I had just got my offer for Cambray accepted, rather to my surprise.’
In 1895 Cambray was enlarged at a cost of about £2000, and in October 1897 Miss Beale, by deed of gift, made over the property to the Ladies’ College, though it was arranged that she should still continue there the school and boarding-house. Miss Beale marked this return of Cambray House, ‘enlarged and alive again with girls,’ into the possession of the College, as another notable event of the annus mirabilis.
Cambray House, on its acquisition by the College through the gift of Miss Beale, was leased to her for a nominal rent; the school and boarding-house being carried on as a private venture until 1906, when their existence was recognised in the College prospectus for the first time. Miss Beale spent another £2000 out of her own income upon additions and improvements after she had made over the house to the College. This was a large sum, but even from a financial point of view by no means wasted. In five years the profits of school and boarding-house amounted to £1000, for which Miss Beale planned further fruitful use.
Cambray School, or, to give it its true title, Cheltenham Ladies’ College School, and Cambray boarding-house, which took pupils belonging to both the new school and the College, was not the only undertaking for which Miss Beale made herself personally responsible. She also started, and placed in a good financial position, two cheap boarding-houses, St. Helen’s and St. Austin’s, and in course of time presented them to the College. Her position in regard to all these institutions was surely very unusual, not to say unique. The foundation of a school of over one hundred pupils, and of houses containing the same number of boarders, would be a respectable life’s work for many a woman. This work appears to have been only one of the many occupations Miss Beale found for the little leisure left her by the cares of the great College and its ever-multiplying interests.