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Headmistresses



Name First
Year
Last
Year
Miss Lillian E Vobes                1913 1935
Miss Joyce M Abbot                 1935 1938
Miss Amy Kathleen Henshaw 1938 1944
Miss Winifred M S Moss          1944 1961
Miss Margaret L Medcalf          1962 1968
Miss Audrey Mayhew                 1968 1969 (acting)


Miss Vobes joined the Pupil Teacher Training Centre in Lewes in September 1906 and was appointed Principal in September 1910. When the Lewes County School for Girls was created in 1913 she was appointed Headmistress.

Miss Vobes resigned in 1935 and moved to Aberystwyth after her sister's death to look after the children. She was born in November 1883 and died in early 1944 at the age of 60.

(For more details see the biographies area of the website.)

Miss Abbott was a graduate of London University and had several teaching posts, most recently Headmistress of the Leamington College for Girls before to coming to Lewes. Her letter to the Old Girls' Society just after she left and published in the 1938 School Chronicle gives her address as Convent of the Incarnation, Fairacres, Oxford, which is an Anglican community living a contemplative monastic life.

Miss Henshaw was born in 1902 and attended the County School for Girls, Clapham. She studied at University College, London and was awarded a BSc (Hons) in 1924. She held several teaching posts, latterly at St Martin's in the Fields High School, London prior to becoming Headmistress. She left in 1944 to become Head at Beckenham School.

Miss Moss came to Lewes in September 1944. It was not her first headship, as she had spent four years in Liverpool as Headmistress of the Liverpool College for Girls. She retired in December 1961 and died in 1972 after a long illness.

(For more details see the biographies area of the website.)

Miss Margaret L Medcalf was born in the third quarter of 1921 in the Hendon area. She taught at Portsmouth High School for Girls before coming to Lewes in January 1962. Miss Medcalf left in July 1968 to become Head of Stamford High School for Girls and remained there until her retirement in 1978. She is now in her 90s and rather frail; the last address we have for her is in the Stamford area.

Miss Audrey Mayhew was acting head for the year before the school become part of Lewes Priory School in September 1969.

Most of the information is from "The Staff Register" initially for the Lewes Pupil Teacher Centre 1905 1913, and from 1913 the County School for Girls. It is held at the East Sussex County Record Office.

Janet Pope November 2013.