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An introduc on to the work of Lady Allen of Hurtwood.

October 2009Part one.

‘Call me Marjorie.’

I was si ng in a day long mee ng last week, interviewing playground manufacturers to see who would be building a number of pathfinder sites inTower Hamlets. They bombarded us with violently coloured CAD drawings of playspaces crammed with pieces of kit. The major design elementsteering the process generally seemed to be how much can we fit in here and s ll meet all the required clearances?

The most intense experience came from a gentleman who wanted to sell us his unique consulta on system that would allow us to consult withchildren and adults from up to five sites all in one day and enable his company to complete the build on these five sites before the end onDecember.

I felt as if I had been fed blue sweets, sunny D and children’s television at a funfair. In factIi found myself almost swayed by his pitch and then Ibecame aware of something that I can only describe as a quiet but stern, warning cough coming from somewhere behind my imagina on. There shewas. Lady Allen on my shoulder. Warning me to remember all that I had been taught.

Now for many of you that must sound completely nuts. Lady Allen? Born May 10th 1897 died 1976, was si ng with you in a mee ng cough sternly atyou... are you deranged Wilson?

Now explaining this to you may take some me, but I would love to introduce Lady Allen, my invisible friend, to you.

One new playworker on the Adevnture playground at St Johns wood was flummoxed by being introduced to his playground commi ee whichincluded lady Allen of hurtwood and lady Ploughden . he fumbled about what to do (curtsey bow shake hands,) and what on earth did he call themM’lady Hurtwood , M’lady Ploughden? Lady Allen , seeing his confusion took pity on him and said ‘call me Marjorie, and by the way Jess Milne, howare your parents?’ ‘I sat at her knee for about five years,’ Jess says.

I know about her life only through her wri ng and from anecdotes gathered from Jess from Robin Moore and from her Daughter Polly.

Whistle stop tour coming up.

Mother Sala born 1864 in Lewisham spent her childhood in kent with aunts . had rich play experiences that she later wrote about in A string of beadsfor granddaughter Polly. Married Georgie Gill (cousin to Eric Gill sculptor and font designer (most famously Gill sans) )Son of non conformistmissionaries. They married and moved to Kent and a er two sons Colin and Alan were born, Marjorie arrived on 10th may 1897 . in her memoires, Sheshares a series of vivid play memories from her childhood. Of catching toads and se ng them on frying pans over fires that she and Alan lit, orwatching a 28 foot long bike with11 seats for blind cyslists and one for a sighted cyclist at the front speed past their home. Of sleep walking during athunderstorm and talking about angles with umbrellas, of her and Alan betraying their parents u er rejec on of religion and sneaking away toa end regular Sunday school classes, and of her only confessing to this when she won an a endance prize, of roaming freely and for hours in thekent countryside, of going on six week holidays with Sala camping on the Norfolk coast and waking up before dawn, of collec ng amber and cornelian on the beaches and playing boules with the round stones the found there.

Sala and Georgie were founder members of the camping club and spent most of their lives living in caravans around the country or on farms whichthey managed so Marjorie’s life was very much an outdoor one. She recalls the being ill for a long me and her brothers se ng up a series ofmirrors which allowed her to see the flowering orchard and gardens of their home and later, the tasks of the farm, the churning of milk to makebu er . She says these are the ‘enduring memories of my life. When later I worked among children condemned to live in barbarian sub-human citysurroundings my thoughts always returned to my early good fortune. The remembrance of this has made me more determined than ever to restoreto these children some part of their lost childhoods. Gardens and secret places where they can create their own worlds; the shadow and the mysterythat lend enchantment to play. ‘

Marjorie went to an independent progressive school Beadles where she again roamed freely in the surrounding country side with her fellows andstudied the things that she was good at and that captured her imagina on rather than taming the spirit, she le with no qualifica ons but havingserved a year as head girl. Sala commented that Bedales brought out Marjorie’s genius for organisa on.

He brother Coli was now studying at the Slade and began to invite her to join him at gatherings at the Cafe Royal in London where she got to knowar sts and socialites of the day. Many are s ll familiar names to us now. She chose to study hor culture and a ended the University of Readingwhere she refused to assign herself a religious faith despite all efforts of the administra ve authori es. Because of this she was always regardedwith suspicion by some members of staff. She says that she feels sure that they didn’t have the slightest knowledge that it was she who wasorganising the midnight nude bathing sessions in the lake.

Her gardening work took off and she began to get commissions to design gardens.

1921 At this stage Colin had won the Prix de Rome and insisted that she come out to visit the gardens of Rome while he was there. She did this andalso joined Colin and his society arty friends on a walking holiday. It was on this trip that she met Clifford Allen with whom she fell in love.

Clifford Allen was a pacifist and leader member of the Independent Labour Party. He shared a flat with his great friend Bertrand Russell and had wona scholarship from his home town in Wales to study at Cambridge with Robert Trevelyan, Herbert Morrisson , Fenner Brockway and RamseyMacdonald, (might not have that quite right, it says here, but they were all mates.) CA as he was known had been a pacifist during the 1914-1918 war(which I have not men oned l now but which was of massive importance as a background t this story.) He had been imprisoned three mes for this,the last me he had served his me with hard labour, solitary confinement and a bread and water diet. He had contracted TB and lost the use of onelung. On a recent mission to Russia, where he had met with all the influen al leaders and had an interview with Lenin, he had almost died as a resultof this illness. This visit to Rome was somewhat of a recovery for him.

Long story short, they moved into his flat in Ba ersea together, got married, she went on working, discovered she was pregnant with Polly, acceptedan commission to design and plant the gardens at Glyndebourne during her pregnancy. She spent much of her me caring for her very poorlyhusband and suppor ng him in his demanding and complex poli cal career, (He was too ill to stand for elec on so acted as an advisor to Ramsey

Macdonald with whom he frequently did not agree but as who he saw the best chance of nego a ng a peaceful and reasoned introduc on of socialism in England.)

They build a house and lived in it and loved it then realised it was too small and built Hurtwood House on the Surrey downs which was their dreamhome and became something of a hub for poli cians ar sts and ac vists. They also founded an independent school which used the house as itspremises.

In the mean me 1929 Lady Allen persuaded the owner of Selfridges to allow her to create a roo op garden on the Oxford Street shop. She found thatshe had to invent new techniques to meet the problems she found, but solved them successfully. It became a venue for everyday enjoyment,fashion and art shows. At this me she also realised a lack of organisa on for her profession and founded the Ins tute of landscape architects. (Recognising it as a profession with its own training and standards.) In 1932 CA is given a peerage which alienated him from most of his friends.

1933 Lady Allen became interested in Nursery Educa on and she designed a roof top garden for a new nursery school in St Pancras . This was her firstshot at designing a playspace and featured sand and water and turf and beauty. She said the children played like country children in this place andparents found respite and were be er companions to their children (Nursery schools were a rarity at this me.)

1934 she describes her sister in law opening up her garden to local children as a playspace with a caravan and lots of wood and junk to play with.

She also starts to write a weekly country diary for the Manchester Guardian.

1936 she becomes involved in the plans to mark the corona on of Edward the 8th. She speaks out and says this should be las ng changes nottransitory bun ng and is duly elected chair of a commi ee to plan these changes. They produce a series of pamphlets about how to create beau fulvillages and commemora ve tress plan ngs and how to make playparks! Those of you with a sense of history will know that Edward the 8th abdicatedhis place and it was taken by his brother George the 6th. Marjorie’s commi ee decided to carry on with their plans just adding an addendum to theirpamphlets.

1934 CA founds Anglo German group to foster a be er understanding between the na ons.

1935 CA travels to germany to try a diploma c talk with leaders. talks to Hitler and to Frick about ceasing Jewish persecu on.

1936 CA a ends Nuremburg rally in a vain a empt to talk Nazis out of war and all that went with it.

1938 CA travels to talks in Europe about the Sudetenland against doctors advice, including disobeying a ban on flying.

1939 Lady Allen is 42 when her beloved husband dies. She sca ers his ashes outside the League of Na ons building and throws herself into her work,her standard way of recovering from a trauma.

War is declared.

Sala writes a string of beads

Herbert Morrisson a great friend of CA and Marjorie as Leader of the LCC is responsible for the evacua on of children from London to safer places.

It is this that shows Marjorie a way in which she can make a pacifist contribu on to the war effort.

As chair of the execu ve of the Nursery School associa on Marjorie begins to understand that there is not the infrastructure to support evacuatedchildren and their mothers in places outside London. Long story very short, she organises and fundraises for demonstra on prefab nurseries to bebuilt which are then, within a year rolled out to 200 sites across England. They are filled with volunteers who have been through a trainingprogramme organised under her auspices, they are furnished and equipped with pieces made to an approved design out of bomb damaged wood,fabric etc by auxiliary firemen and others on standby. Prefab buildings cost £600 each to make were designed by nursery teachers working with anarchitect and took three days to build. They were run according to the principles of the NSA as influenced by Froebel that a child’s mental andemo onal health was as important as its physical health many of these con nues un l well into the 1960s.

As part of the dissemina on of the successful model that the NSA were using to run these nursery centres, she organised with J Arthur Rank for a filmto be made about the work . It was called Double Thread, was given a high profile launch and was well received. Through this work with Rank, shesuggested that children should have films made especially for them. Arthur Rank appointed her chair of an independent advisory commi ee toreview the children’s’ films that he started to make. She served on this group un l it was dissolved on the 50s. They made over 700 films andconsulted closely with children on their responses to each one ac ng on their advice, their work was later taken over by the Children’s FilmFounda on.

Her war me work had shown a hideous mish mash of inter departmental government confusion. When the Ministry of Health was le to run thenurseries, play went out the window and a care model was introduced by nurses unused to the lively play of healthy children. She tried to getgovernment to co-ordinate their nursery provision and bring it under the aegis if primary educa on. In fact despite some token success there was nota nursery place for every child l the 1990s,

Yet another campaign. She realised that evacuated and orphaned children had no representa on within government at all. She carried out extensiveresearch and found that these children were systema cally abused and treated in inhuman ways. No governments sta s cs or informa on could bediscovered about them, even when she organised ques ons to be asked in the house, informa on was not withheld, it simply did not exist. Thisallowed the most appalling unregulated treatment of children (caning for bedwe ng and, in the case of Dennis O’Neill, long term starva on andbea ngs which resulted in his death, overlooked by every one of the bodies who was supposed to be responsible for his welfare.. the news of thisincident had a ‘Baby Peter’ effect on the na on and coincided with a le er that Marjorie had wri en to The Times (1944) highligh ng thesecircumstances for the first me. The response was overwhelming the biggest ever response to a le er in The Times. George Bernard Shawcontributed to the debate as did Nancy Astor and Susan Isaacs, (Marjory had primed them about her work before hand. ) Pressure was put on thegovernment to launch an enquiry. She had also checked with all of the 600 people who wrote to her in addi on to those who wrote to The Times, inpersonal responses, thanking them for their le er and asking if they would be prepared to give evidence in a public enquiry.

At first she was slated because everyone thought she had over exaggerated her research findings, which she published in a pamphlet she fundedherself. But she was vindicated some three years later when the Cur ss report was published and stated the case in even bolder terms than she haddone . The children act 1948 was as a direct result of this piece of work of hers.

Another campaign. She was called to give evidence in 1944/45 the year of the Dutch Hunger winter, into the situa on of children made homeless ororphaned in Europe as a result of the war and par cularly in the countries that had been occupied. It was as a result of this study tour that she wasinvited by the Bri sh Council to give a lecture tour in Norway. And this is where our part in the story begins.