‘For me, St Paul’s would always be among the pine trees of Berkshire’: English public schools and wartime evacuation (1939-45)
Résumé
This paper considers the wartime evacuation of English public schools as a result of enemy bombing as well as the commandeering of school buildings for government and military purposes. It looks at the way evacuation was privately organised by public school authorities often relying on the old school tie while also taking financial considerations into account in the case of schools faced with sharp declines in their numbers in the 1930s context. The paper also focuses on the way evacuation challenged public schools’ sense of elective belonging and corporate identity while making it possible to establish new contacts with state schools and refugees from continental Europe. It finally assesses the legacy of public schools’ evacuation journeys as the institutions returned to their historic sites at the end of the war, hoping to preserve the more practical spirit of the evacuation years, at the time of the Butler Education Act and the building of the Welfare State.