Janet Wells 1948 - 1966

Miss Wells grew up in Alcester, Warwickshire . She went to St. Hilda’s College Oxford where she read History. Her first teaching post was at Colston Girls’ School in Bristol, from there she went to Hitchin Girls’ Grammar School where she became second mistress in 1945. She was appointed to Barrow Girls’ Grammar School in 1948.

 

As with all the previous headmistresses, Miss Wells’ period at the school was a time of both continuity and change. In general. as in previous years, there are very man appreciative comments about the school both in the School Magazines and in the personal memories of the respondents.

 

However, it is noticeable that criticisms of aspects of the school appear both in the magazines and more noticeably in the answers to the questionnaires. This is most pronounced in the years from the late 1950s onwards, a time which generally saw a more critical climate affecting attitudes to public institutions like schools, the police and the church.

 

Miss Wells was a Quaker although very few of the girls knew this. In retrospect the ethos of the school with its emphasis on service, on community, on co-operation rather than competition, and the undoubted spiritual basis of the school assemblies fitted closely with her own beliefs and philosophy. However, it is also clear that the school's ethos was well established in previous decades.

 

We do not know whether Miss Wells accepted headship of the school knowing how comfortable she would be with its standards, but she both accepted and developed them throughout her time as Head.

 

 

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