It could have been very different – 147 applicants went for the post. Had he not been successful, his daughter Olivia Newton John, who passed away 24 hours ago (at the time of typing) might have been born in another town.
Above – Brinley Newton-John (who I blogged about here) from what is now Hills Road Sixth Form College – I took this photo years ago when I was attending evening classes at the college.
It wasn’t so much appointing as their committee ratifying a recommendation that came from the then Cambridge County Education Committee’s sub-committee for schools. Furthermore, note the new responsibilities that the Minister for Education had placed on county councils – i.e. the transfer of functions to the County Council of the Cambridgeshire Technical College and School of Art. This was the institution that became CCAT, later Anglia Polytechnic University, and today Anglia Ruskin University. Hence both councillors having had buildings (since demolished) on the East Road site named after them.
Remember in those days, the term Cambridgeshire and Cambridge County seemed to be used interchangeably. Furthermore, the administrative geographical area for the County Council was much smaller before the changes in the 1960s & 1970s, as the poster below outlines.
The previous Committee Chairman who resigned was David Hardman (Labour – Romsey), a former parliamentary candidate in Cambridge. He and wife Freda were also active in Cherry Hinton – where Freda got elected just before war arrived in the UK. Their marriage didn’t end happily – Freda ran off with an American medical officer and emigrated shortly after their divorce at the end of the war. David got over this by throwing himself into the general election campaign as the Labour candidate for Darlington – and won. His appointment to ministerial office as Parliamentary Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Education meant relinquishing his local government duties. It was Cllr Clara Rackham who took over the chair of the education committee. It was at that committee that the appointment of Brinley Newtown-John as the new Headmaster of the Cambridge County High School for Boys was approved and ratified.
Above – The Saffron Walden Weekly News, 24 Dec 1945 in the British Newspaper Archive
The Saffron Walden Weekly News stated:
“The committee ratified the appointment of Mr. Brinley Newton-John as Headmaster of the County Boys High School, beginning at a salary of £1,120. Mr Newton-John who is 31, is at present sixth form master at Stowe School. He is a graduate of Gonville and Caius College. It was stated that 10 in all of the 147 applicants were interviewed.
“We do feel we have an extraordinarily good man here” Ald. Frost (Chairman of the School Sub-Committee) said. “He is young – very young for a headmaster – but that is all to the good”
You can read about what the high school was like in the middle of his tenure as headmaster in this booklet I purchased on the first fifty years of the institution, which I’ve digitised here.
The article notes that Cllr Clara Rackham was elected by her fellow councillors to chair the County’s education committee. Furthermore noting the presence of Lilian Mellish Clark, at the time the Vice Chair of the County Council.
Above – Cllr Clara Rackham circa mid 1920s, from the Palmer Clark Archive in the Cambridgeshire Collection. Colourised by Nick Harris, Commissioned by Antony Carpen.
Post-war UK was a tough place to be – and all three had their work cut out.
Yet between them, Cllrs Rackham and Mellish Clark had over half a century of public service experience between them. In 1930, one of the local papers gave the latter this write-up in their Women Workers feature:
“There are few women in England who started life in such uncommon, romantic, and historical surrounding as Mrs Mellish Clark, CC, JP. The daughter of the late Sir Archibald Milman, K.C.B., Clerk to the House of Commons, her early years were passed in the Speaker’s Court, in the shadow of the Mother of Parliaments. Her parents combined social with Parliamentary life; to her mother’s famous weekly luncheon parties came the great of both these worlds.
“The pomp and patriotism of Royal pageant, witnessed under the most perfect of conditions, the constant association with people responsible for the conduct of her country, and above all, the example set by her mother, the late Lady Milman, all combined in her younger years to make the vital, public-spirited woman that Mrs Mellish Clark is today. And it was from her mother, who was treasurer of the Ladies Grand Council of the Primrose League that Mrs Clark inherited the great organising ability for which she is so well known.
First Public Work
“The first public work undertaken by Mrs Mellish Clark in Cambridge was the secretaryship of the Ladies’ Boarding Out Committee. This most excellent movement, which was started by Miss Mason, has to its credit the making of many honest citizens out of the human material that otherwise would have had but little chance to become useful members of the community.
“Mrs Clark carried on the strenuous work which this secretaryship involved for several years, extending her interest in public life a little later on by becoming the secretary of the Cambridge Nursing Association, an interest in which she still retains. She is also an original member of the Cambridgeshire Insurance Committee, and a joint secretary of the Cambridge County Nursing Association, to which the County Council contributes annually for services rendered.
“During the [First World] War Mrs Clark was the Chairman of the Prisoners of War and Comforts for the Troops Committee, and she also took an active part in the work for the Soldiers and Sailors Families Association and afterwards of the War Pensions Committee. She is still Chairman of the Children’s Committee of the War Pensions Committee.
Election as a guardian
“In 1915, urged to the deed by Mrs Keynes (now Councillor Mrs Keynes), she stood for election to the Board of Guardians. Contrary to her own expectation, she was elected and remained a member until the Board was dissolved on March 31st last. She was Chairman of the Board for two years, in 1927 and 1928.
“Since 1919 she has represented the West Chesterton Ward on the County Council. So highly is the quality of her work esteemed and her administrative ability prized, that with a widening of powers there is no position on that body which she could not fill with east and distinction.
“In 1921 Mrs Mellish Clark was made a Justice of the Peace for the Borough. She is at present Chairman of the Committee for the Care of the Mentally Defective, of the Further Education Sub-Committee, of the Juvenile Employment Committee, and of the Institutions Sub-Committee.
“Mrs Mellish Clark is the perfect example of the sympathetic and successful public worker, and has the charm and manner that comes of contact with the social world, the straightforwardness of purpose that should, but does not always distinguish the politician, and a very human and very levelling delight, one that is shared by every strata of society.
“When she is not busy with committee meetings, housekeeping, planning the wedding festivities for her daughters, doing, in short the thousand and one things that fill up the day of the busy woman, she fulls up the odd moments in playing bridge.”
Ends/
How did she find time to sleep?!?!
I’m just exhausted reading and transcribing all of that!
Above – Lilian Mellish Clark from the Cambridgeshire Collection
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Lost Cambridge 