Sixty Glorious Years
A week, as Harold Wilson once mused, is a long time in politics. As my in-tray and postbag regularly attest, much the same could be said of a school. Sixty years, therefore, is a relative aeon.
Looking back over the limited archive that we have for the early years of Hurworth House, one is struck by so many familiar landmarks in schools year: Speech Days, Sports Days, trips out, visiting speakers with fine, stirring words to encourage the boys.
Unfortunately, in common with a lot of schools, the record of our early years is somewhat patchy. It consists of a few ageing photographs and a couple of scrapbooks of contemporary press cuttings. The reason for this paucity of source material is simple and one that I can readily relate to; one is too busy with the day to day running of the place to worry over-much about creating an archive for future biographers to access. As a historian I should know better. As a working head, one is faced with the daily realities.
Our earliest photographic record is a whole school picture taken in 1949 just three years after the schools inception. The facade of our main school building that forms the backdrop is instantly recognisable as is the familiar navy blue uniform of the boys and the instantly recognisable school badge.
The boys look much the same as our boys today. But the teachers look daunting. Can that really be how our children see us? Surely not?
The story of Hurworth House's foundation is an interesting one. Unable to find a suitable preparatory school for her young son David, our founder, Mrs. Carew-Shaw found a suitable site, gathered together a headmaster and a handful of suitable teachers and simply began her own.
Doris Carew-Shaw was a remarkable woman. I had the pleasure of meeting her shortly before her death a year or two after I joined the school in 1997. Not only did she found this very special place but she was also a noted dog-breeder, was the first woman in County Durham to hold a driving licence but was also involved almost every aspect of local and charitable life in the county. Such people with such diverse passions are sadly in short supply these days.
Founding a school with all the emotional and financial commitment that that involves is one thing, stepping back and allowing others to run it is something that requires trust and courage. If it were my school and my money I would be in every day checking on my investment! But that was not Doris Carew-Shaws way. Instead she moved aside to let the professionals run it.
Inevitably, as the school grew, that financial commitment became too great and, in 1970, the school faced an uncertain future. Looking at some of the press coverage of the time, it was obvious that there was considerable parental and local commitment to keeping afloat what, even back then, was a very special place. A group of local businessmen and parents then formed an action committee and re-established the school as a non profit making charitable trust, which is what it remains to day.