Recalling our private schools

They all attended private schools at Bexhill.

The Best Years Of Your Life is the title of a venture which maintains the high standard of research and of public interest earned by previous exhibitions at Bexhill Museum.

Volunteers Heather Morrey and Gillian Beecher have dedicated almost a year to researching the rich tapestry which is the history of a once flourishing and influential sector of the local economy.

Their efforts made their debut at last Monday's open day at Bexhill Museum, a fund-raising event to raise the profile of the museum and its extension fund which was also supported by the Bexhill 100 Motoring Club. When extended, the museum will include a display of Bexhill's motoring heritage including the world land speed record car built by St Richard's Catholic College students and the replica of the Serpollet steam car which won the 1902 Bexhill Motor Trials, Britain's first international motor sport event.

Dame schools burgeoned from newly-built villas as Bexhill developed rapidly at the end of the 19th Century.

From these beginnings developed a myriad of larger independent schools - too numerous for the exhibition to hope to cover in depth.

Their importance to Bexhill's prosperity is brought home by this exhibition. Behind the kind of elegant, ivy-coloured facade redolent of so many illustrations in the girls' and boys' magazines of the era were classroom and sports field scenes depicted at the museum.

As Bexhill developed as a healthy resort, those who helped administer Britain's Empire were happy for their children to be educated here as boarders.

The schools were not only local employers and purchasers of food and local services.

Home on leave from armed or colonial service, the parents would either patronise the local hotels or rent accommodation. Later, many chose to retire to the town, so profiting the town's solicitors and estate agents.

This economy prospered until the Second World War. The first cracks appeared when some schools did not return after war-time evacuation.

A brief post-war renaissance was brought to an end when spiralling land prices in the Sixties made it more profitable to sell out to the developers than to struggle on - some giving such short notice that scholars had to be found places in remaining schools.

Among the first established, Ancaster House was founded by the Rev Burrows. It s merged with former rival Charters Towers to become Charters Ancaster. But the ivy-clad Penland Road premises were closed by the Girls' Public Day School Trust in 1995. The name lives on with the present Charters Ancaster College in Gunters Lane.

It is a story of survival which stands out among the lost names - Effingham, Falconbury, Harewood, The Beehive, Seafield ...