Old girls of the Stannite Association gathered at The Room Restaurant in Manchester to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of their school.
Old girls of the Stannite Association gathered at The Room Restaurant in Manchester to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of their school. Now known simply as Windermere School, it has changed names and locations many times since Miss Catherine Sharpe, a disabled young woman of 25, opened a ‘dame school’ in the back room of her mother’s house opposite the windmill at Lytham in the winter of 1862.
Miss Sharpe’s School for the Accomplished eventually became St Anne’s High School for Girls and after leaving the seaside in 1924 continued at Browhead as St Anne’s School, Windermere. The private co-educational school is today run on the Gordonstoun principles of the educational pioneer Kurt Hahn and ex-pupils are still known as Stannites.
Joan Sykes, one Stannite at the reunion remembered boarding at the school during World War II and watching from her room in the tower at Browhead as the 18 ton wartime Sunderland flying boats built on Lake Windermere, took off.
Photography: John Cocks
The print version of this article appeared in the August 2012 issue of Lancashire Life We can deliver a copy direct to your door – order online here
