1940s: Argyll and Felix Sturgeon
Adventures in Education after Kilquhanity
Argyll and Felix remained in Scotland for a further 9 years before returning back across the Atlantic Ocean. In that very period of short time, they attempted to establish 2 new schools.
Hall Manor School, was, I understand, located near Peebles and Laggan House School, which is near Ballantrae in Ayrshire..
In 2011 I wrote to Tandy Sturgeon, Argyll’s step-granddaughter, for any information she might have on these schools.. My question to her was:
Hall Manor and Laggan suggest they had a strong desire to make a go of a school in their own right, but neither could have been successful as they could only have survived a few years each – what was in their heads or motivation to attempt these 3 schools (including Kilquhanity), first with partners, then on their own?
Tandy replied:
‘The letters demonstrate a lot of grit and determination about this. I don’t think they thought of anything but the founding of a good, solid school that would last in perpetuum. They just kept running into snags: when they had finally hired a cook and handyman (with family) for one school, (Hall Manor), they heard from their landlords that they (the landlords) wanted to reclaim their house. And they couldn’t seem to find qualified teachers, which I think had something to do with the war.
Can you imagine such a circumstance compared with today? Times were different all right. At one point they had another offer of a partner – a military friend of Argyll’s who wanted them to go down to Lancashire and start a school with him. They drove down and their were interviews and meetings, despite the fact that they were in doubt, due to its plan: that it was to be a Church of England School. So they had tea with the bishop etc. but decided despite all the potential support that they were better off on their own. Good on them I say!’
I am not sure of the location, or building that was Hall Manor School in Pebbles.
Laggan House
According to Ayrshire’s archives:
The owner Major Denzil Hughes-Onslow was killed in the First World War, and his widow Marion, having run the house as a Red Cross auxiliary hospital during the latter part of the war, lived on there. We hold county valuation rolls up to 1941, and these show that soon after Marion’s death in 1933, the Laggan estate was sold to Hambling, Crundall and Co. Ltd. Of London. These appear to be the owners up to 1941, with the house itself listed as unoccupied.. . .
. . . the first appearance of Laggan House as a Boarding School is in the 1947 Roll. The proprietor is still Hambling, Crundall and Co. Ltd, and the tenants are Argyll and Mrs Sturgeon who you have told me are the Head Teacher and his wife. The boarding school remains listed in the valuation rolls until 1949. In 1950 there is no mention of a Boarding School and the listing has changed to ‘Mansion House’ proprietor Myles J. Callaghan. It is once again empty. In the years between 1941 – 1946, the house is still owned by Hambling, Crundall and Co. Ltd. And is listed as empty.
The Third Statistical Account of Ayrshire, by John Strawhorn and William Boyd 1951, has the following in its Ballantrae parish section, page 867:
Laggan house is occupied by a private boarding school with 20 pupils, opened in 1946, and there is no longer any thought of preserving the old amenities’. I have not been able to find any other information on the school. While we have several publications which state that only the 1913 wing and billiard room gable survive today due to a fire, none give the date of the fire, and I have not been able to find any mention of it in any other source.
A further question to Tandy Sturgeon in 2011:
What made Argyll and Felix decide to leave Scotland and return to the States or Grenada?
Tandy replied:
Perhaps they just got tired. This is where the mystery of the obit writer (probably Felix but possibly Argyll himself [consider’ She bears her sorrow nobly.’] who says that he founded one school.
Elsewhere in a letter of application to St. Vincent (B.W.I.) High School for Girls, Felix says that she and her husband started a school which Argyll ‘retired from when it was well established’ As if Laggan continued on without them, which I don’t think it did.
I also find this hard to believe.
They had to go to a place like Grenada because Argyll couldn’t get a U.S. visa. The West Indies Extra Mural system (an island hopping visiting lecture program) hired him, and Felix as well. Then they both also taught at the Anglican High School in St Georges, Grenada.
