Stratton Park School

 

Stratton Park School was founded as a private preparatory school for about 50 boys, although precisely when it was founded is not certain. The school relocated to Brickendonbury from Great Brickhill Manor, Buckinghamshire, in 1933. It was at Great Brickhill from 1920, prior to which it was located, and indeed appears to have had its origins, at Stratton Park near Biggleswade in Bedfordshire. The house at Great Brickhill was demolished in 1937, it is said due to its poor state of repair, although Sir Philip Duncombe believed his father had it knocked down because he thought a war was coming. According to Great Brickhill in the mid 1800s by Michael Warth, the annual rent for Great Brickhill Manor was £485.

From at least 1920 until his retirement in 1939, the headmaster and proprietor of the school was John Warren Clouston. On his retirement it is presumed that Mr Clouston sold his interest in the school and it was at about this time that it became known as Stratton-Stanmore Park School, having merged with Stanmore Park School in Middlesex a year or so earlier (see below). For a short while Mr Clouston and N.J. Holloway were joint headmasters. It was reported at the parish council meeting on 16 March 1939 that N.J. Holloway had been enrolled in National Service as a part-time warden. The school continued at Brickendonbury under its new name for a couple of years, during which time Donald A.R. MacDonald and Cecil J. Pike were the joint headmasters.

Although the precise origin of the school is uncertain, it is known that the Stratton Park estate near Biggleswade was sold in 1910 and converted into Parkfield School for boys. A helpful find was a programme for a Pastoral Play and Prize Giving at Stratton Park, Biggleswade, on 27 July 1918 which notes that two of the prizes were presented by T. Harold Clouston Esq and E.C.T. Clouston Esq, and that one of the pages in the play was played by R. Clouston. Thus, although J.W. Clouston is not mentioned, it is clear that the Clouston family was involved with – perhaps even the founder of – the original incarnation of Stratton Park School. T. Harold Clouston was probably a distant cousin of J.W.; E.C.T. Clouston was almost certainly J.W.’s brother, Dr Eric Crosby Townsend Clouston (1887-1956), whose wife Olive Fisk was one of the first women doctors in Suffolk; and R. Clouston was most likely Rudolph Haakon Stewart Clouston (1912-44), J.W.’s son by his first wife Katherine Edith Amy Hughes. It is also interesting to note that before her marriage in 1910, Katherine Hughes ran a preparatory school in St John’s Wood, North London, in partnership with Miss Amy Mary Hanson. The house at Stratton Park was demolished in about 1960 and the grounds are now a business park.

By all accounts Stratton Park was a happy school. Former pupil Martin Simons describes it as a lovely, delightful school and he recalls the boys fishing in the moat but catching little more than carp which were thrown straight back. Another old boy, John Austen-Brown, remembers that some of the boys used to follow the hunt and were allowed the hunting gingerbread but not the stirrup cup. On one occasion he and his brother followed the hunt to the finish but on their way back to school they got lost and were brought back by a fine lady in a fine car, too late for supper; they never discovered who this fine lady was. On 5 November 1937 all the fireworks the boys had collected and kept under their pillows until the great day, had been placed, in preparation for the celebrations, in a large pile beside the moat and the sports master assigned to guard them until dark. He was a pipe smoker and absent-mindedly knocked out the pipe against the heel of his shoe. A spark flew into the pile and set the fireworks off – much to his surprise and the boys’ great disappointment!

At the time of the Munich Crisis (September 1938) an air raid trench was dug in front of the school, and from 1940 the staff took turns at night to man a rifle in the tower of the house in case any German paratroopers should find their way into the grounds. At the beginning of the Second World War the school was suffering from falling numbers of pupils and in about 1940 Lady Pearson sold the Brickendonbury estate, including the mansion. The school, together with most of the boys, transferred to Benington House in the hamlet of Hebing End, near Stevenage. The school continued under the name Stratton-Stanmore Park School and the headmaster there was Donald MacDonald. Mr Holloway had retired to Walton-on-Thames and Mr Pike had joined the Royal Air Force. Although the 1943 edition of Kelly’s Directory still lists Stratton-Stanmore Park School at Brickendonbury, it is understood that the school moved in the autumn of 1940, the school, four cottages, pumping house, outhouses, gardens and grounds having been requisitioned by the Office of Works on 12 July 1940 under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939. The rest of the Brickendonbury estate was requisitioned on 25 July.

It would appear that Stratton Park School was one of the very first places in the Hertford area to have a telephone as the 1938 edition of Kelly’s Directory gives the school’s phone number as Hertford 8. Whilst at Brickendonbury, the school was the feature of an article in Picture Post magazine of 24 June 1939. The son of Stefan Lorant, the creator and editor of Picture Post who is widely regarded as the godfather of photojournalism, was a pupil at the school. It is a slightly strange article about sports days and prize-givings in general which, despite plentiful photographs of pupils, staff and parents, says nothing at all about the school itself and the photos have only impersonal, almost flippant, captions – in retrospect it is sadly a lost opportunity to record something of interest about the school.

Stanmore Park preparatory school was transferred from Brighton to what was described as “a large mansion with extensive grounds off Uxbridge Road, Stanmore” in the 1880s. The former Lancashire and England cricketer the Reverend Vernon Royle was headmaster from 1901 until his death in 1929. Norman J. Holloway, MA, was principal when the school moved “to a park near Hertford” after Christmas 1937.

On leaving Stratton Park, Mr Clouston’s furniture was valued at £850; it included over two dozen engravings, a number of oil paintings and a pastel, all by H.W. Clouston (possibly Harald, another distant cousin). His forwarding address was given as c/o Mrs Evans, Strathmashie, Kingussie, Scotland, although they clearly did not move to Scotland since J.W. died in Bedford in 1947, aged 62, and Henrietta died in Hitchin in 1968, aged 72.

Acknowledgements:

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance given to him by the Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Harrow and Hertfordshire Archives, and by Martin E. Simons and Peter Clouston who provided much of the information given in this article.