Fearon, Miss Anstice

Fearon, Miss Anstice, Southlands School, Exmouth

Anstice Rose Annette Fearon (1879-1964) was born in Hungerford where her father Rev Arthur Fearon was curate. The family moved twenty miles away when Arthur Fearon became the vicar of Blewbury. In 1901 she was an assistant teacher at a school in Tonbridge Kent[1] and by 1911 she was second mistress of Thoresby High School Leeds which had moved to Great George Street in 1909.[2]

In 1915 she moved to Exmouth and was one of the three principals at a boarding and day school for girls, Southlands School (other principals were Miss Jessie Vintner MA and Miss Fanny Vintner MA.[3] However, she had been a visitor to Exmouth long before she moved there[4] and in 1909 the Exmouth Journal reported her success in the Exmouth Tennis championships.[5] Soon after her arrival at Southlands School she and the Misses Vintner, as joint owners, put in a planning application to extend the buildings and the work was completed by the end of 1915. By the beginning of 1917 she had sole charge of the school and she remained the headmistress there until 1930 when she retired because of ill-health. An ex teacher described the school as ‘a very jolly school and the head has a sane and non-competitive outlook’.[6]

She evidently joined the Exmouth branch of the NUWSS soon after taking up residency at Southlands and was on the committee;[7] she also hosted a meeting at the school of the Exmouth NUWSS when Mrs [Millicent] Fawcett, president of the NUWSS, gave an address.[8] She involved the school in various charitable events in the town during WW1 – for instance, the Ministering Children’s League’s Exmouth Seaside Home and the Exmouth VA Hospital – putting into practice the school’s motto, ‘not for self, but for all’, of which Anstice was proud.[9]

Evidence of Anstice’s continued interest in women’s issues is a report in 1920 of her address at the National Women Citizens Association conference in Torquay.[10] After retiring from Southlands School in 1930 she lived in Haslemere Surrey until her death. She continued to devote time to education by acting as a Governor at Stoatley Rough School from 1935 until its closure in 1960. It was a mixed boarding school for refugee Jewish children from Nazi Europe which continued on after WW2 when its intake gradually changed to disadvantaged British children. As Chairman of the Governors, she apparently bought everyone at the school ice creams to celebrate VE Day![11]

 

 

Entry created by April Marjoram, June 2018


[1] Information from the 1901 census.

[2] https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1256255 Accessed 9 Sep 2018.

[3] DEG, 12 Jan 1915.

[4] ExJ, 18 Sep 1897.

[5] ExJ, 7 August 1909.

[6] Daphne Barnes Phillips, Exmouth’s Rolle, Exmouth, Corridor Press, 2015.

[7] WT, 22 Feb 1916.

[8] WT, 18 Jul 1916.

[9] Phillips, Exmouth’s Rolle.

[10] WT, 28 Sep 1920.

[11] Phillips, Exmouth’s Rolle

 

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