Ipswich High School – Our Second Headmistress

OUR SECOND HEADMISTRESS

Miss Bertha Lucy Kennett became Headmistress of Ipswich High School in the summer of 1899, succeeding our first Headmistress, Miss Sophie Youngman. Miss Kennett had previously taught mathematics and been Deputy Headmistress at Nottingham High School, GPDSC and was a graduate of Girton College, Cambridge. Miss Kennett was an active participant in the move for women’s rights as President of the Ipswich & County Women’s Suffrage Society and she also took part in WSPU activities in London. She encouraged the young females in her charge to set high academic standards for themselves and to be engaged and opinionated in public affairs. Described by her contemporaries as a ‘pioneer’, Miss Kennett introduced the custom of sitting for external examinations and scholarships and encouraged all girls who had the ability to go on to further education at university.

Science was a vital part of her curriculum, but it was not an easy subject to study, given that lessons were taken in a small, dark scullery in the basement of the Northgate Street premises.
With ever-increasing pupil numbers, one of Miss Kennett’s greatest achievements was moving the school from its original site in Northgate Street to Brakefield in Westerfield Road, which officially opened on May 10th 1907. Under her leadership, the popular hockey club was started, and she regularly held teas for the sporting schoolgirls in her study. The hockey team was successful from its outset and the sport is one that Ipswich High School has excelled at ever since.

A past pupil said of her “She was essentially generous— both in thought and deed— frank and direct in all her dealings, interested in the doings of each member of the Staff whom she trusted implicitly, and was always sympathetic to those in trouble. Her own family ties were of the strongest, a marked feature in her life. Her love of teaching, both of Mathematics and the Bible, never ceased: she kept abreast of modern Bible Scholarship, and her lessons were remarkably alive and interesting.”

In 1910 Miss Kennett was appointed Head Mistress of the Perse School for Girls, Cambridge, and was succeeded at Ipswich by Miss M.Gale. She kept in regular contact with Ipswich High School and returned many times in her later life to support school events and to remind students of the gratitude they should feel for the founding Headmistress, Miss Youngman.
She died on April 20th 1935, aged 67 and soon after, the Old Girls Association created the Kennett Memorial Fund to provide financial assistance to girls embarking on a university education. Having been a member of the Archbishop’s Advisory Committee for Adult Religious Education, news of her death prompted the Archbishop of Canterbury to write personally to her family to express his sympathy at her passing.