Charlotte Mason

Charlotte Mason was born in London in 1841 and when at college in 1860/ 61 she met and became firm friends with Selina Heelis of Ambleside (into whose family Beatrix potter was to marry.) Charlotte was very concerned about the standard of education delivered by governesses to middle-class children, and after a career as a teacher and college lecturer, came to Ambleside to set up her first "House of Education" to educate young women to become better governesses. This was established in Springfield, on Rydal Road, in 1892 with just four students, moving across to Scale How in 1894 and the number of students rising to fifty. Although originally training governesses (and I well remember doing switchboard duty at Scale How and browsing through the old record books, and being amazed at the wages paid to these governesses even in the 20th century - they were well paid if they got £60 a year!) the college's methods were well received nationally, and students soon began to move into teaching in schools, and Fairfield and Annex (both on Rydal Road, and both halls of residence during my time at CMC) were established as schools for the students to use for teaching practice.


Charlotte Mason 1841 - 1923

Charlotte Mason never retired, and died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 81 in January 1923. The college which bore her name - never called a College in her lifetime - continued the thrive and expand, and in 1965 there were 163 students (all female) in the three years covered by the teacher training course. The following year brought the first male students - all mature students and not living in college - and the college became co-educational and continued to expand. In 1992 - a hundred years after its foundation - Charlotte Mason College was dissolved and absorbed into Lancaster University's St Martin's College, a mere upstart founded when CMC was already 71 years old. The present complement of the new "Ambleside Campus" is around 800 full-time students and many more on part-time and in-service courses for teachers.

There has been one major development which retains the name of the college's founder and that is the new college library, the Charlotte Mason Library (see gallery) which was opened in May 2003.


Besides founding the College, Charlotte Mason was also responsible for founding the PNEU (the Parents' National Educational Union) which is still providing home schooling around the world, and wrote many books which are still used as the basis for home schooling especially in the United States.

At a time when most children were educated only to a minimum standard, Charlotte challenged this accepted view and stressed that 'children are persons', and that teachers and parents should treat them as individuals. Children, she said, need to be stimulated from an early age by a broad curriculum, not simply to be trained to read, write and count. She believed that this broad curriculum should contain the best literature, the best art, the best contemporary science, in fact the best of everything. Although this may seem obvious to us now, it was far from obvious to Victorian educators and it is only because of Charlotte Mason and others like her that it is regarded as self-evident today.

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