Harriet Clarke was born in Cheltenham in 1846, the daughter of Joseph Clarke, a tailor, and Maria Clarke.
On 10 March 1885 Harriet was appointed headmistress of Lord Digby’s School in Sherborne. The school was then located at Foundation House in Westbury (now the Britannia Inn), but Harriet’s twenty years as headmistress of Lord Digby’s School were not to be easy ones, while trying to improve the education of the girls at the school she was constantly struggling to keep it financially afloat. In 1898, the school moved to a property in Newland formerly occupied by St Swithin’s Laundry (now the site of Waitrose car park), where it remained until 1931 when it moved across the road to Sherborne House (now The Sherborne).
In 1905, Harriet left Lord Digby’s School and moved back to Gloucestershire, setting up Girton House School in Churchdown, where she died in February 1926, aged 79.
Headmistresses of Lord Digby’s School
(?) Mary Gaylard
1770 Mary Bishop
1770 Frances Soper
1774 Eleanor Gaylard
1808 Ann Longman
1812 Ann Noake (1770-1864)
1851 Sophia Jane Hughes (1818-1880)
1855 Theodosia Thomas
1856 Priscilla Brett (c.1815-1867)
1867 Mrs Mary Kenerston (née Noel) (1839-1896)
1885 Harriet Sophie Clarke (1846-1926)
1905 Susie Ellen Duxfield (1883-1962
1911 Ellen Ida Pearson (1879-1955)
1917 Margaret Millicent Billinger (1883-1942)
1942 Helen Cecilia Thomson (1902-1996)
1967 Mrs Monica Jane Fellowes Ditmas (née Richardson) (b.1924)
1979 Shelagh Mary Hill
Rachel Hassall
Further reading:
Barbara Elsmore (ed.), Looking Back at Lord Digby’s School (Lord Digby’s School Old Girls’ Society in association with Sherborne Museum, 2014)
Shelagh M. Hill, Sherborne House and its people (Dorchester, 1996)
H.C. Thomson, Lord Digby’s School: Some Aspects of Its History (Sherborne: The Abbey Press, 1969)
Friends of Sherborne House, Short History (accessed 12 August 2024)
See also: