Wynyard Hall was home to a Training College from 1946 to 1961: but, mystifyingly, any official history of the College is impossible to find.

There is no mention of the story involved in its formation as a College under information on Training Colleges, the County Archives, the Education Department, Hansard, or anywhere else. Even the Librarians at the National Archives and the Parliamentary Archives at the House of Lords made an extensive search and could find no record of it or of the negotiations of the War Office involved in its creating. It seems as though, although it only closed down forty-three years ago, the place has been wiped off the map of knowledge and has disappeared into the mists of time. Indeed, the only mention of it in the little booklet “Wynyard Hall and the Londonderry Family” is “The 8th Marquess spent most of his time at Wynyard, which was then used for a period as a teachers’ training school.” And that appears to be the sum total of all information on it. Official references appear, for some reason, to be non-existent and from their point of view, the College seems to have sunk, reprehensibly and regrettably, without trace.

It seems that, during the war, Wynyard Hall, being unoccupied at the time because the 7th Marquess had other homes, both in London and Ireland, was requisitioned by the War Office for the use of the Army. After a while, they vacated, and having given up occupation, and the place being left empty, it was taken over for use by the Fire Brigade. Then the Fire Brigade left.

With the end of the war in sight, the Government of the day conceived the idea of Emergency Colleges to reinforce the debilitated numbers of teachers in the country and to provide some sort of occupational training for those who would be leaving the forces in their thousands. There would soon be many, many people unqualified in anything other than the skills that they had learned in the forces or who had been snatched by conscription from unfinished occupational training which they had been undergoing, and, simultaneously, a huge lack of qualified teachers. As a result of this, Wynyard Hall was “handed over” to the education Authorities with instructions to use it as an Emergency College, specifically for Teacher Training; and the Londonderry home, empty and temporarily unloved, waited with bated breath to se what was going to happen to it.

The Government brief was that the College was to train ex-service women, together with mature women from related occupations, as teachers; and to churn them out, one batch after another, fully qualified, (i.e. Certificated) as quickly as possible; and it was envisaged that, as such, the College would only be in existence for a year or two, perhaps three; and that then his Stately Home could be returned to Lord Londonderry.

Nothing ever goes to plan; and the College went from success to success and lasted for the next fifteen years, initiating two year and then three year courses for its students and extending its training from the initial Nursery, Infant and Junior areas to all aspects of teaching, right up to Sixth Form level. By the time its lease was up, the Hall was returned to the Londonderrys and the Training College was amalgamated with Neville’s Cross. The staff and students transferred, and Wynyard Hall Training College, as a separate entity, ceased to exist.

Its spirit, however, continues. The Wynyard College Association continues to flourish and still meets once a year for a four day residential Reunion and much reminiscing; and, despite the fact that the first students left College fifty eight years ago (yes, 58!), and the last left forty four years ago, the Association and our personal memories of Wynyard are still going strong and we have great fun and the air is peppered with “do you remembers.”

Miss Sophie Bertie, B.Ed. (1896-1979) was selected, late in 1945, to be the first Principal of the still-to-be-created College. As qualification for the post she had an impressive personal and academic record. Born a Victorian, nurtured in a strict Edwardian childhood, she came of age during the First World War, during which she also gained her B.Ed. at Manchester Day College. (She was later to be awarded an Honorary M.Ed. from Durham University for Exceptional Services to Education.) To date she had had an impressive career in Education; always demanding exceptionally high standards of her pupils and staff, whom she ruled with an iron hand in a velvet glove whilst simultaneously working indefatigably at local and then National level in the N.U.T.

Her qualities having long been recognised, (she had become a Headmistress in West Bromwich at the unprecedented age of twenty-eight), she was then awarded the first Headship of a new school in Sunderland; West Park Central School for Girls; and such was her success again there that the school quickly achieved the same status in people’s minds as the already long established Grammar Schools and Private Schools in the area.

When, in 1945, she was considered to be the obvious person for selection for the position of Principal of the new Teacher Training College to be opened at Wynyard, she insisted immediately that one vital criteria of her being able to take up the position was that the College was to be affiliated to Durham University and to be understood by all in authority not be just a temporary institution, but to be considered to be fully equal to older, well established Colleges, and to be given the same status as the best of them; to be treated in the same way and with the same respect.

She also insisted that, since the College was to be rented from the Londonderry Estate, part of the ethos of the College should be that all Estate practices, lost during the time of the army and the Fire Brigade, should be re-established and continued during the college’s period of residence: hosting the Meet and opening musical concerts and College plays to the community; entertainments to include classical performances provided by famous virtuosi of the various arts, and with local residents invited to all performances.

Sophie considered, rightly, that not only was it the College’s duty, the duty of the occupants of “The Great House”, that if the College was to be the resident of Wynyard Hall, then it must provide a high level of the Arts for the enjoyment of the community at large. (She herself had a superbly rich contralto voice. She had trained with Isobel Baillie and could indeed have considered a successful operatic career had she been so minded.) She saw it also as her obligation to the students of whom she was to be in loco parentis to provide the highest quality of the performing arts as was available as part of their education.

She saw her own function, in that sense, not only as Principal of the College, but as the Caretaker of the duties of a Squire and of his position and obligations towards the community in which he lived, and insisted that the College must take up, in their absence, the obligations of the Londonderrys to the workers on the Estate and to the residents in the surrounding villages; becoming, in fact, host to the community in the same ways as would normally be expected of the owners of a Stately Home. Upon all of this she insisted as part of the rules she laid down to the authorities if they still wanted her to be its Principal. She was selected, and as a result of her negotiating skills and her insistence in fulfilling what she considered to be the moral obligations of her new position, the College, under her leadership, became again the hub of community life.

As occupant of Wynyard itself she also drove a very hard bargain. Lord Londonderry’s Estate Manager recalls that although the rent for the College occupancy was a mere £500 per annum; a paltry sum even in those days for a place so large; she insisted that Lord Londonderry should still be responsible for the maintenance of the roof and the guttering; all two acres of it, and also for the repairs to any damage caused by leakages.

Because of the Hall’s listed status, all down pipes were internal so that they should not spoil the architectural lines or the Palladian façade. They were very difficult to get at, therefore, without demolishing sections of the building, and one of the most expensive moments was when a dead pigeon was washed down into the internal guttering, blocking it and causing flooding, soaking one of the floor-to-ceiling high mirrors and the gilded wall-paper in King’s; and Miss Bertie insisted that such expense should not, and never would be, allowed to come out of the budget that she had been given for the education of the students in her charge.

The upkeep of the Hall was astronomical for the day, and Lord Londonderry was out of pocket throughout the whole time of the College’s residency without even the benefit of the use of his own State Rooms, which were to be used as Library and lecture rooms, common rooms, gymnasium, Assembly Hall and Chapel by the students.

And so, the College came into being; a beautiful but sadly battered building. The house had been empty and plundered of household items and many artefacts during the two years prior to its requisition; well lived in by Army and Fire Brigade; and looked internally like a badly battered barracks, which is indeed what it had been. It was unloved and uncared for and, at that point, totally unfit for the sort of Ladies’ College that Miss Bertie envisaged.