Beach Court School, Walmer

Both Molly Evans and her friend, Edith Mathews, were involved with Miss Rawlins and her school in Walmer, Kent based in Beach Court. A number of photographs and correspondence have survived.

Beach Court, Walmer. Miss M.E. Rawlins to Molly Evans postcard, Deal, 26 Jul 1910

Beach Court, Walmer. Miss M.E. Rawlins to Molly Evans postcard, Deal, 26 Jul 1910

Miss M.E. Rawlins to Molly Evans postcard, Deal, 26 Jul 1910

Miss M.E. Rawlins to Molly Evans postcard, Deal, 26 Jul 1910


It is presumed that both girls who lived in the Stourbridge/Hagley area attended the school from about 1903 at the age of thirteen. The earliest postcard dates from 1905. The friendship very naturally continued in the school holidays and the pictures taken in Stourton Court in Xmas 1908 presumably bear witness to this.

We know that Molly went to Paris for a few months in the autumn of 1908 and it seems very likely that this was arranged through the school. The School for girls catered especially for boarders from abroad and one advertisement talks about arranging tours, presumably educational, to the continent.

The 1911 census for the school shows the Principal Miss Mary Emma Rawlins, born 1858 in Dublin, at the head of a school with a handful of pupils. This census would not appear to have taken place in term-time but the school had a resident French mistress, a language that Molly had brought to some fluency by the time she was recruited to work as a nurse in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit in Dunkirk in 1917.

The photo of Dot Rawlins in one of the Molly’s albums would appear to be of the niece of the headmistress. Dorothy Madeline Rawlins (b 1893) was the daughter of Henry Adair Rawlins, a surveyor, the brother of Mary Emma Rawlins.

The latest evidence of contact with the school came when Miss Rawlins sends a postcard to Molly from the school in 1910.

View from Clent Hill, showing Hagley Court. Mrs Evans to Molly postcard, Stourbridge, 7 Jun 1907

View from Clent Hill, showing Hagley Hall. Mrs Evans to Molly postcard, Stourbridge, 7 Jun 1907

Mrs Evans to Molly postcard, Stourbridge, 7 Jun 1907

Mrs Evans to Molly postcard, Stourbridge, 7 Jun 1907


Sources

  • Molly Evans’ Photo Album (Juliet Gibbon)
  • Two Postcards from ‘ETM’, 1905
  • Postcard from ‘namesake’, 1909