Warrington Training College 1922-24
Imagine my delight in receiving, by post, a small photograph album that once belonged to a student who attended Warrington Training College in 1923-24, with “snaps”, as she called them, chronicling the days of her college life. I feel sure she found friends for life in Lola, Maggie, Norah, Carrie, Sal, Jessie, Bunny, and the many others who feature in the album.
The photograph album was discovered in a second-hand bookshop in Manchester and purchased, along with some other books, for the images of early 1920s fashion, and they had absolutely no connection with Warrington Training College. Having re-discovered the album years later when sorting through stuff in the attic, with a view to down-sizing, they decided that it ought to be “returned home” and sent it on to us here at Hope.
In the Warrington Training College Archive, there is a gap in the students’ admissions registers for the period 1920-1928, probably due to a fire, in the December of 1923, which caused significant damage to the central block of buildings. First year students were redistributed among other Church Training Colleges, and the second years, of which Beatrice would have been one, were accommodated in another wing of the College which escaped damage. The College was finally closed in July 1924, until new premises could be found. This led to Warrington Training College moving to Liverpool in 1930, the site of Hope Park Campus today, and changing its name to the name of their chapel, S. Katharine’s.
Beatrice successfully qualified for recognition as a certified teacher with a second class in the Divinity examination in 1924, and began her teaching career at Chapel Street Infants School in Dalton-in-Furness, Cumbria.
by Karen Backhouse, Special Collections Librarian
Realms of Gold 