Childhood and Education 1907–1927
I was always interested in education. I think it was the education stuff from my father that came through.1
Mary Beaumont2 Crowley was born in Bradford on 4 August 1907. Her family was a very important influence on her life and chosen career and, in particular, her father played a large part in the decisions she took about the way her personal and professional life would develop. Ralph Henry Crowley (1869–1953) (Fig. 1.2) was a Quaker by faith and a medical officer by profession and his combined social conscience and confidence in the means by which society could and should be changed for the better shaped his life and promoted his keen interest in the education and the welfare of children.3 He had graduated in medicine in 1893 and as a young man went to Bradford to work for the pioneering Bradford School Board as Medical Superintendent of Schools.4 This was a time of high infant mortality when municipal authorities in the northern industrial towns such as Bradford were beginning to introduce preventative measures to ward off the spread of infectious diseases and improve the health of the population. Increased awareness of the impact of poor living conditions on general health was leading medical experts such as Crowley to realize among other things the vital importance of ventilation in buildings supporting large numbers of children. This awareness was part of a Europe-wide open-air school movement that introduced some experimental designs of schools built with flexible walls to open easily to the outside with implications for the way that the whole school was designed.5
In Bradford, Crowley met Muriel Priestman, also from a Quaker family of wool merchants and they married. The Priestman family were involved with educational movements locally and had been founders of Friends schools in Bradford. There was also a connection between the Priestman and the Clegg families that would prove to be significant later in Mary’s life.6
Mary resembled her father physically and was thought by those who knew them both to be very like him in character. They shared a tendency to act without regard for personal gain or public recognition. She was also drawn to people who were similar to her father in character and personality and through his many contacts in architecture and education, came to know some of the most significant progressive educational thinkers and practitioners at home and abroad. Many of Mary’s closest acquaintances and most admired individuals were Quakers too.
1.1 An intimate portrait of Mary and her mother Muriel in their Letchworth home. c. 1910. This is quite an informal and intimate photo for 1910, representative of middle class progressive adult child relationships. IOE Archives, ME/A/1/9
Ralph Crowley devoted his career to furthering the understanding of child welfare, and developed a profound interest, before the First World War, in the organization of innovative educational environments in support of ‘the whole child’, a phrase he is credited to have originated. He argued that such a concept posed profound challenges for professionals involved with the care or development of children in the future.
1.2 Ralph Henry Crowley. IOE Archives, ME/A/1/4
Our study, consequently, must be directed, not to this or that defect, or disease or symptom, but to the whole child – to the body and its physiological working and pathological changes; to the mind, as manifested by the general and specific intelligence and the general and specific behaviour of the child; to the environment at home and at school; to the child’s heredity.7
To these ends he travelled widely seeking out the most child-centered and efficient environments from the point of view of the health and well being of the individual. He was interested not only in function but also in the character of any planned educational environment
In the planning of the school the aesthetic side should not be forgotten. The keynote should be everywhere simplicity; perfect beauty and perfect hygiene are quite compatible. The school architect should be, of course, as should all architects, an artist: that does not mean that the construction of the school will cost more; a beautiful school, simply built may cost less than an ugly and ornate one.
He considered that even the colour of walls came within his remit of caring for the whole child, ‘… the walls should be tinted, preferably a soft grey-green in the more sunny classrooms, and an ochre tint may be used in the less sunny rooms … and yellow and red tints should be avoided in rooms naturally bright’.8
As we shall see, these remarks by Mary’s father, and published when she was a small child, resonate strongly with the features and characteristics of the approach she took to school design in later years working as an architect, first for Hertfordshire County Council and later for the Ministry of Education (from 1964, Department of Education and Science).
Ralph Crowley was a key figure in an international movement to establish school hygiene and a compulsory medical inspection service in elementary schools and he pioneered the introduction of open air schools in England.9 By 1912 there were open air schools in several counties in England, the best examples being in London, Birmingham and Bradford.10
Mary Crowley once noted the close resemblance between the timber pavilions at the Busch House Open Air School for Delicate Children, Isleworth (Fig. 1.3) that her father officially opened in September 1938 and her own planning of Burleigh Primary School, Cheshunt shortly after the war. Others have noted the influence of the English open air schools on the architecture of Crow Island School, Winnetka.11 There are certainly important connections between the design of open air schools in the first quarter of the twentieth century and post-war designs that achieved a similar feeling of openness to the elements through extensive fenestration, especially in glazed unit corners.
But apart from his enthusiastic engagement with his work, Ralph Crowley was also ‘a man with infectious enthusiasms – his knowledge of flowers, shrubs and trees and vegetables too, was encyclopedic’.12 Mary inherited her father’s interest in and knowledge of botany and later declared it one of her guiding principles to preserve and plant trees when building schools. Her father’s enthusiasms were ‘boyish in their intensity and … (he) always appeared to be much younger than his real age.’13
In Bradford, as school medical officer, Ralph Crowley had initiated an experiment in feeding school children alongside the campaigner and educator Margaret McMillan.14 In 1908, shortly after the Liberal Government reforms of 1906/7 had laid the basis of child welfare service through schools, Crowley was recruited to the Board of Education in London. There he became Senior Medical Officer in charge of medical staff but once again, he attempted to broaden the remit. His concern was not merely with medical problems; he was as interested in the educational as in the physical development of the child.
1.3 Busch House pavilion, 1938. IOE Archives, ME/A7/4
1.4 Crow Island School, Winnetka, USA, 1941. Copyright Cranbrook Archives, Richard G. Askew, photographer, 5676-3
Taking up the new post in London necessitated moving the family south and the Crowleys took their young family to live at Letchworth in Hertfordshire, an experimental new town with many like-minded enthusiasts who imagined and were committed to building a better world through community and cooperation. It was at Letchworth, the world’s first Garden City and an experiment in planning instigated by Ebenezer Howard, that the Quaker architect Barry Parker15 designed a family house for the Crowleys – the last house at the end of Sollershot Road – overlooking a farmed landscape in the direction of Hitchin.
The Garden City was ‘a town designed for healthy living and industry of a size that makes possible a full measure of social life but not larger, surrounded by a rural belt: the whole of the land being in public ownership, or held in trust for the community’.16 Many Quaker families, like the Crowleys, were involved in the Garden City movement at this time including some of their friends and relations. These included the Cadbury Brothers, also Quakers, who commissioned an ideal village for their chocolate business workers, and others, called Bournville, near Birmingham. Sir Ebenezer Howard’s book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, published in 1898, inspired many of these individuals who collectively introduced the Garden Cities of the early twentieth century.
The comfortable household of the Crowleys consisted of the parents and a Mrs Hargreaves brought with them from Bradford as a ‘lady help’ for their two young daughters. Mary’s mother created a pleasing environment and bought good pictures and fabrics from artists and manufacturers associated with the Arts and Crafts movement to decorate the home.17 The staircase with its rope handrail was at first open to the sitting / dining room but this was subsequently closed off on account of rude remarks that might be made about the many visitors from the two daughters sitting on the stairs.18
Mary’s early years seem to have been rather idyllic when she was able to play freely and wildly in the adjacent fields and about the house. She recalled climbing the roof tiles to sit on the ridge and that this caused little alarm about safety. Later, she learned to ride a horse, one of her passions enjoyed formally and informally. A farm worker in nearby fields allowed her to accompany him at his tasks. ‘I sat on his horse when he ploughed … and … drove his wagon back to the farm … like an ancient warrior, standing up and holding the reins taut, both the horses and I wanted to gallop.’19
At night she was afraid of the dark but was calmed by the sound of her mother’s piano, from which she acquired her lifelong love of music. Her vivid memories of these early years include learning piano, starting with the black notes, and acting in a play, taking the part of a piece of ivy. The local community, in the early days at Letchworth, was artistic and eccentric. Neighbours included the Olivier family where a young Laurence, later to become the world-famous Shakespearian actor, lived. There was also a Miss Birch who painted a portrait of the very young Mary, clutching a rag dog. It was from this artist, in her home, that Mary took her first drawing lessons. From about the age of ten, Mary began to keep a diary and we have her nature diary as a record of her early drawing.
1.5 and 1.6 Mary and her older sister Elfreda at their home in Letchworth, c. 1910. IOE Archives, ME/A/9, IOE Archives, ME/A/1/9
The house in Letchworth hosted regular and frequent meetings where enthusiasts for the Garden Cities developed their ideas for planning a new town. This was to become Welwyn Garden City, designed by the young French Canadian architect Louis de Soissons in 1920 where the Crowleys were to take up residence soon after its development. By this time, Mary was boarding at school but her new home at first was the upper storey of an old farmhouse with barns, a pond and a silo. Here, her parents took responsibility as wardens of a hostel catering for Garden City workers between 1921 and 1925. Thereafter, the Crowleys moved once again to a family house in Bridge Road, Welwyn Garden City.
During her childhood, Mary would have become used to her father’s regular trips abroad and on his return would have taken part in conversations about educational environments he had encountered. In this sense she was ‘born’ into education and for Mary, the subject was part of everyday family life. There were important connections established with the progressive educational movement in the USA at this time that would eventually bring to Mary’s attention some of the possibilities of reforming schooling through the uniting of education with architecture. In 1913, as a delegate of the Board of Education, Crowley attended the fourth International Conference on School Hygiene at Buffalo, USA. While on this trip, he took the opportunity to visit several American and Canadian cities to examine progress in medical service provision for schools. In Toronto, he discovered an open air Recovery School established in 1912 on Lake Ontario for 100 children, which would have encouraged his interest in open air school plans, discussed in his book.
He visited schools for ‘the feeble minded’ in New Jersey, and Epileptic Colonies in New York. But he also became particularly interested in the playgrounds movement that he discovered to be flourishing at this time in some of the major cities on the east coast. On children’s playgrounds, he commented.
there is nothing corresponding in this country to this playground movement in America, although it has been steadily developing there during the past 20 years – (where) the school itself becomes the social centre with extensive playgrounds attached, the highest development of this kind is to be found in Gary (Indiana) … the playgrounds form part of the school ‘plant’. They are available also for adults … and are in continuous use from 7.45 am onwards … open all the year round.20
The playground movement was also flourishing on the west coast where it provided employment for progressive educationalists including a young Carlton Washburne (1889–1968) who was later to establish a progressive agenda in public schools in Winnetka. Also in the mid-west, at Gary, Indiana, Crowley witnessed the practical realization of new ideas about the arrangement of school sites and buildings to support children’s well-being in line with a pedagogy of self-directed learning.21 Shortly before his arrival there, the progressive educator, William Albert Wirt (1874–1978) had become district supervisor in this new multiethnic community built around the burgeoning steel industry.22 Here, Crowley had the opportunity to visit the buildings that gave expression to Wirt’s educational philosophy. He noted the arrangement of buildings housing different sized units for different purposes and the importance given to the outside environment which was conceived as another ‘room’ available to children. In these schools, there were to be found only a limited number of rooms fitted with ordinary desks and seats and particular importance was given to enabling children to learn practical life skills. He reported that ‘part of the ground is used for school gardens, trees are planted wherever possible, and there are several animal houses constructed by the pupils’.23
Wirt had introduced a system known variously as the ‘Gary’, ‘Platoon’ or ‘Work-Study-Play’ plan for elementary grades. Pupils were divided into pairs of units of equal numbers and while one unit was occupying study rooms, the corresponding other would occupy the general work / play areas thus maximizing the use of facilities at all times. The schools were open to the community in the evenings, weekends and summers and the curriculum was expanded to include manual training, recreation, nature study and other non-traditional subjects.24 All parts of the buildings were engaged in instruction through careful design. Corridors, so often vacant and institutional and serving the purposes of circulation only, in the traditionally designed school, were here put to educational use.
The idea of using every part of the school plant as an educational opportunity has been worked out with great success and considerable economy. The upper corridors of the school, for instance, are beautifully lighted and are used as museums and picture gallery.25
It was such modern schools without classrooms where it was intended that children should be motivated by the freedom allowed them to work at their own pace and at their own preferred subjects and where they could see the immediate usefulness of the work they accomplished that Crowley chose to highlight on his return in reporting to the Board of Education. Such schools in certain districts led by progressive educators were influenced at the time by the philosophy and practice advocated by John Dewey (1859–1952) with reference to the importance for children’s learning of first hand experience, and Frederik Lister Burk (1862–1924) with regard to systems supporting self education. The work of progressive teachers in the USA demonstrated how ‘real education’ – which Crowley understood as synonymous with ‘progressive education’ – could become accessible not only by the relatively rich, as was the case in England and the USA, but through public education by ordinary working people.26 This was the social justice at the heart of Crowley’s interest in and understanding of educational well-being. This trip was to have significance later for Mary, in her studies at the Architectural Association, when in 1932 she referred directly to the Gary public schools as an inspiration for her fifth year prize-winning thesis which was a plan for an education and welfare centre.27 Later still, the educational and architectural project of changing classroom design to reflect advances in pedagogy was an aspiration she held with others over many decades.
Ralph Crowley’s interest and involvement with the United States continued for some time and in the 1920s he once again sought inspiration there for his work developing Child Guidance Services, noting the importance of relating the two areas of education and medicine in the interests of ‘the whole child’.