George Mearns Savery
George Mearns Savery was an English headteacher. He was the principal of Ripon Road College, Bilton. He founded Harrogate Ladies' College, in Harrogate, North Yorkshire and, in collaboration with headmistress Elizabeth Wilhelmina Jones, expanded the school in the light of contemporary ideas about what a girls' school should be, planning "everything for the best... which would do in the lives of women what public schools for boys done for men".
Background
Savery and his wife came from a Wesleyan Church family background. He was born in Kingston, Jamaica, the son of Reverend George Savery, a Wesleyan minister from Devon. His mother was Philippa Ann Savery from Cornwall. As a child Savery lived with his family in Vogue, Cornwall, surrounded by copper miners, and was the third of nine siblings. He was educated at Kingswood School, Bath, and Queen's College, Taunton. On 20 June 1879 at the Temple Chapel, Taunton, Somerset, he married Caroline Amelia Sibly, daughter of Thomas Sibly. Savery and his wife had three children.Career
Academic career
Savery received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Lincoln College, Oxford in 1876, and his Master of Arts in 1880, being president of the Oxford Union Society in 1876. Former prime minister H. H. Asquith was a contemporary of Savery at the Oxford Union, and in 1920 still showed "an immediate and genuine interest" when Savery's name was mentioned by his former pupil, Sir Bertrand Watson, member of parliament for Stockton-on-Tees. Beginning while still an undergraduate, between at least 1871 and 1881 Savery was a classics tutor, senior master and housemaster at the Wesleyan College in Somerset. In 1885 he was appointed headmaster of Ripon Road College, later called Harrogate College, at Bilton, Harrogate, living in-house with staff and pupils. He was headmaster of that boys' school until it closed in 1903. He was noted for his administrative capacity, and he was said by the Halifax Evening Courier to have had a "kindly disposition". He is remembered today for the 1893 foundation and initial proprietorship of Harrogate Ladies' College.Harrogate College for boys
This school was founded and built in 1863–1864 by William Henry Heigham, on Ripon Road, Harrogate. The school had a roll of around eighty boys including boarders, and was a "substantial stone building with a tower and battlements", according to Hewlett. An early reference to the Harrogate College for boys was a news report of a cricket match between Ilkley College and Harrogate College, held in May 1875. Heigham died in 1883, and the school was headed by Savery who owned shares in it from 1885 to 1899 when he retired. According to a school advertisement of 1899, the school was doing well in that year, and it had a preparatory school in Strathmore House on Ripon Road, but it closed in 1903. On the subject of Harrogate College, Jean Walton suggested that "Illness in a boys' school could be totally disasterous , once boys were sent home schools were often found for them and this happened to the boys' school".In 1881 Savery's brother Samuel Servington Savery, aged 20 years, was attending this school as a scholar. By 1889, S.S. Savery had attained his Master of Arts at Christ Church College, Oxford and was teaching at the school. Savery was advertising in the Wesleyan Times in that year that Harrogate College boasted three Oxbridge-educated members of staff, besides S. B. Wilson, M.A., a graduate of the University of York teaching science, and other staff skilled in foreign languages, drawing and music. The same advertisement declared that "the situation of the College is well suited for giving health and vigour to the constitution", that the college was offering an entrance scholarship, and that the sons of Welseyan ministers might be offered a reduced fee. S.B. Wilson of Harrogate College shared Savery's connection with Taunton, in that he was a guest lecturer on the subject of carbon in that town in 1887. The school closed in 1903.
Harrogate Ladies' College
The school was initially known as The Ladies' College, then Harrogate College. It was founded by Savery in 1893 in a private house under the headship of Betsy Field Hall, who ran the school until 1898, when it occupied Percy Lodge. The Yorkshire Post commented that it was, "the product of a pioneer mind, an inspired adventure in building... the first to see in Yorkshire an opening for a girls' public school of the first class... His distinction was that he saw it ". In 1901 he planned a new school building in collaboration with Miss M. E. Jones. She was an Ulster-born graduate of Queen's College, Belfast, a form mistress at Bradford Girls' Grammar School, then headmistress at Harrogate Ladies' College from September 1898 to 1935.Ground was broken in 1902, and the building was opened on 17 May 1904. In this building, according to the Yorkshire Post, Savery and Jones planned "everything for the best... which would do in the lives of women what public schools for boys done for men". A 1904 advertisement for the newly-housed school quoted a "fine lecture hall and classrooms, studio, laboratory, library, workshop, large gymnasium, pupils' sitting rooms, single bedrooms, 15 sound-proof music rooms, 10 tennis courts, hockey and cricket grounds, cycling path, gravel playgrounds etc."
As described the by Yorkshire Post, the ideals of Savery and Jones for the school were, "advancement in scholastic matters, the promotion of physical well-being, the infusion of a fine moral and spiritual tone". They rejected ideas of "domination of ideas for the education of boys", the bluestocking, the hausfrau and the finishing school, in favour of potential female careers, "mental and moral training personal responsibility", public duty, and home-making including "pride in the beauty and order of the home". Those ideals of 1901 would, of course, be superseded in certain respects in later years.