Rydal Penrhos Society Newsletter Autumn Term 2021
The Rydal Penrhos Society is the School's alumni association. The Society exists for all alumni, whatever their stage of life – connecting them and keeping them up to date on the School and each other. The Rydal Penrhos Society Committee meets termly to discuss how the Society can achieve these aims.
Past President
Life Vice President
Treasurer
Principal
Deputy Principal
Golf Secretary
Emily Hickman (RPS 2009–14) (to end 2024)
Member
Co-opted Member (Registrar)
Head of School 2018–2019
Head of School 2019–2020
Head of School 2020–2021
Head of School 2021–2022
Penrhos College was established in 1880, under the auspices of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. At this time, general secondary for girls was, in Britain, a relatively new idea. The main aim in educating girls had been to produce young ladies, but Penrhos College, like the North London Collegiate School for Girls and Cheltenham Ladies' College, was one of a new breed of schools that aimed at what Rosa Hovey called 'an all-round development of body, mind and spirit'.
In 1880, higher education for girls had only just become a possibility. In 1878, the University of London had obtained a new Charter allowing women to take degrees, while women's colleges in Oxford opened around the same time – Lady Margaret Hall in 1878 and Somerville College in 1879.
Penrhos College opened for the first time on 23 September 1880 with twelve girls and two pupil teachers. Its key benefactor was the Reverend Frederick Payne, a Wesleyan Minister living in North Wales. Payne also persuaded two ladies, Miss Wenn and Miss Martin, who ran a small girls' boarding school in Norfolk, to take charge of the school. Miss Wenn was the school's first Principal.
Payne remained, Rosa Hovey noted in her history of Penrhos, the school's 'Honorary Secretary, philosopher, and friend'.
In the early days of the school there was no English Church in the area, and the Penrhos girls used to go by a path over the fields to the small Welsh Methodist Chapel at the east end of Colwyn Bay. As the school grew larger, reaching sixty girls by the end of its first year, it filled the chapel. Payne raised funds to have built St John's Wesleyan Church – now St John's Methodist Church. The church house was completed in 1882 and the schoolroom in 1883 – the schoolroom was used for services until the church was completed in 1887.
In 1882, Jessie Osborn, wife of Thomas Osborn, brought her eldest daughter to be a pupil at Penrhos, and in 1885 her husband joined her in Colwyn Bay to found his own school, Rydal Mount School – soon to be called simply Rydal School. The school opened on Pwllycrochan Avenue with fifteen boys. Payne had a hand in this school too – granting to Osborn the house that formed the school’s first building and gave the school its name, Rydal Mount House now forms part of Old House.
School entrance, formerly Rydal Mount House
Osborn was a well-known member of the Wesleyan Methodist educational establishment, having been headmaster at Kingswood in Bath, the school founded by John Wesley. He was a great scholar, graduating from Trinity Hall, Cambridge in mathematics with the tenth highest First in his cohort.
Between 1887 and 1925, when Penrhos's School Hall or Chapel was completed, both the Penrhos girls and the Rydal boys used St John's for Sunday services. The girls and boys entered by different gates, so that there should be no danger of them meeting each other. Colwyn Bay Heritage reports that 'this curious detail is known, because by some oversight Rydal used the wrong entrance one Sunday.' The School still has a record of the letter of protest Rydal received from the headmistress of Penrhos.
Both schools remained single-sex establishments until 1966, when Anne Richards, the daughter of Rydal master Frank Richards, joined Year 12. Innes Foulkes joined in 1970, and in 1972 the school admitted another handful of girls to Years 12 and 13. Five years later, the barriers were dropped at Rydal as it was decided that girls would be admitted throughout the school.
In 1995, the governing bodies of the two schools agreed the terms of a partial merger and Rydal Penrhos was formed. At this point the School consisted of a Girls’ Division based at the Penrhos site and a Co-educational Division based at the Rydal site. In 1999, the two divisions amalgamated, a process overseen by the recently appointed Principal Michael James. In the present day, the School has a 50/50 split between boys and girls.
As Methodist boarding schools growing side-by-side in the emerging town of Colwyn Bay, Penrhos College and Rydal School always featured importantly in each other's lives. It is fitting that the two now form one School, one with a rich and complex history. As always, we are excited for what the future holds. •
View from the South Entrance to the Penrhos site
