Hatchard Ethel Martha 1891-1983

Ethel Hatchard was born in 1891 and educated at the North London Collegiate School for Girls, where she held a London County Council (LCC) scholarship between 1906 and 1908. She was also awarded a bursary to train as a teacher but did not take this up, owing to the death of her mother. In 1916 she took an intensive course for teachers of young children run by the LCC at the City of London College, Moorfields. Between 1916 and 1917 she taught at the Infants' Department of London Fields School, Hackney, London, resigning to become a full-time mother. She succeeded in the preliminary examination for the [teachers'] certificate in 1919. She taught at a private school, 1927-1928 and gave lessons in singing and pianoforte from 1930-1936, returning to teaching 'at the first opportunity' at Rayleigh Infants' School, Essex where she taught from 1936 onwards. She was granted leave of absence to attend a one-year course for unqualified teachers at Wall Hall Training College, 1950-1951 and she continued teaching into the 1950s. She died in 1983.

Mimi Hatton was born in 1915. During World War Two, she was an infant teacher at St Mary Cray Junior and Infant School in Kent, and set up home teaching groups for the children when school was suspended for fear of bombing. The school was evacuated to North Wales in 1944, and there Miss Hatton set up schools in Tabernacle vestries, a disused sawmill and a disused science laboratory. In 1946 she wrote to the Foreign Office offering her services as a teacher to the children of families of the occupying forces in Germany, and became a teacher with the BFES in 1946. She embarked to Germany on 18th December 1946, and initially taught at the BFES School in Bad Zwischenahn from 1947-1949. She then served successively as the Head of Oldenburg School, 1949-1950, and the BFES Bad Oeynhausen Nursery, Infant and Junior School, 1950-1952. In 1952, she became headmistress of a school for educationally sub-normal girls in Kent (Broomhill Bank), a position she held for two years. In 1954, she was taken on by Devon County Council to run a similar school in Devon, Maristow House in Lord Roborough's estate on the banks of the river Tavy. When she was first appointed, Maristow was semi-derelict, and she supervised its restoration to a usable condition. She then set about furnishing it for use as a boarding school, and hired all the staff. She ran the school until it closed in 1976, after being taken over by Plymouth City Council. At this point, she took early retirement, aged 61. Although primarily a girls school, in its later years it took in day boys up to the age of eleven. Throughout her period at Maristow, Lord Roborough, as Chairman of the school governors, became a close friend, and she was regularly a guest at head of table at family dinners.