Did you know there was a teacher training college at Wimpole Hall?
Haslingfield School has been involved in the training of teacher students since at least 1931, but there was a period after the Second World War when these students came from a teacher training establishment based in Wimpole Hall.
There is a large flat area of arable pasture on the Wimpole Estate situated just inside the Arrington Gates. From 1944 to 1960, Wimpole Park as it became named, was host in turn to an American Hospital treating army casualties of war, an experimental teacher training college, a squatters camp, a community school, emergency local authority housing, and lastly a US Air Force Hospital best remembered for being the ‘place-of-birth’ for hundreds of Americans.
In June 1947, the school logbook reports that
“Mr. Worth and Mr. Conquest, students at Wimpole Training Centre, came to gather data for school practice, which begins on June 16th.”
They started teaching on the 16th, and were observed by their supervisors on the 20th.
In January 1948, ten children from Wimpole Park started cookery lessons at the school. Hot school dinners were occasionally shipped in from the park until 1954, when the Head complained about their quality. In September 1948 two more teacher students came. Others followed in January and May of the following year, but the stream stopped abruptly in June 1950, when the college presumably closed.
Trackback from your site.
Steve Odell
| #
I am just starting a project on the Wimpole Park Training College on the ‘Wimpole Past’ local history website. I would love to borrow the photograph if at all possible. Alternatively, some high resolution scans would be most acceptable.
https://www.wimpolepast.org/wimpole_park/default.asp
Thanks and Regards
Steve
Reply
NEVILLE JAMES COLE
| #
This was during father’s headship of Haslingfield school, spanning 36 years until retirement
in 1966. His experience and thoroughness made him a much appreciated in-situ guide.
In the late 1950’s came a strong echo with the arrval, via the county education department
working with the ministry in London, to show a Nigerian education trainee how to best
run primary classes. With ‘the wind of change’ in west
Africa this visitor was apparently destined for senior office post indepence.
NJC
l
l
Reply
W.Morley
| #
I have a school picture (one of the long ones) taken 1948/9 in a tube addressed to Miss.D. Kipper ,Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea.
Reply
Chris Hind
| #
My late father, Arthur Graham Hind, (ex-Capt., RASC) trained at Wimpole Park after being demobbed. I remember visiting it with my mother when they held an Open Day at the end of the one year course. When he left he taught at Trent Bridge Secondary School in The Meadows area of Nottingham. I have no information about his tutors or fellow-students, and would be glad to hear from anyone who has.
Reply
Maggie Andersen
| #
My father GERAL GOODWIN was a student there in 1951 and went on to tech in Ipswich for the rest of his working life. Does anyone know if there are student records available to view or even request?
Reply
richard nunneley
| #
do you know from the records the christian name of one of the students mentioned abve – I refer to the Mr. Worth who could have been the deputy-head of the first school I taught at after qualifying in 1962?
Thankyou.
Reply
Rosalind Bolton
| #
The college did indeed close in 1950: it was an “emergency teacher training college” always intended to be temporary. The idea was to train men (and later women) coming out of the armed forces for teaching. My father was a tutor there and we lived in an army hut on the site from 1947-49
Reply