ARCHIVES UPDATE

Preshil is Founded

By Libby Shade & Felicity Renowden

Margaret Lyttle wrote many notes about the foundation of Preshil and the underlying philosophy of the school. She worried that people would forget that the school's full title is a memorial to her aunt, Margaret J.R. Lyttle, who generously turned her home at 406 Barkers Road, Hawthorn into a school under most unusual circumstances.

Margaret (the younger) wrote in 1986:

"Preshil, the School, came into being towards the end of Margaret J.R. Lyttle's life, either in 1929 or 31, and she died in August 1944. It really was the climax of her long years spent in teaching and in the service of children, and was, in fact an accident in that she had resigned from St. Andrew's, the school she had established during World War One, intending to retreat from the misunderstanding and faulty practices which had come into it, but three parents, one the great-grandmother of the Renowden Family, gathered six children together and implored her to teach them. This she did, in our sitting room, and later all over the house as many more children joined her, until she had so many that Jane Stringer's grandfather had to build 'two sleepouts for her nieces and nephew' to use as classrooms. (The school was unnamed, unregistered, and would not have been given Council approval!) At some stage in these beginning years we, the family, decided that 'Preshil', the place at which a Covenanting ancestor was shot for his beliefs in 1600++ was a suitable name-place, with the golden eagle from The Wings of Courage by Georges Sand as its symbol/badge, above the word Courage."

Documents in the Archives show that the property called Arlington (our Primary School) was purchased by auction in 1936 and the school moved there in 1937. We were delighted recently to meet Shirley Chambers née Tilley, who, as a ten year old child attended Preshil in 1944. She came as a weekly boarder, from Monday to Friday, catching the bus and tram by herself between St Kilda and Kew at the start and end of each week. She was told that she was sent to the boarding school in Kew to be turned into a lady!  At one time during the war there were up to 20 children sleeping in Arlington in various rooms including a verandah which we have been unable to identify, but which Shirley remembers as her bedroom together with other children.

The next reunion for people of the 1930s to 1950s is planned for this coming October.