17 Facts About Olive Willis

Olive Margaret Willis was an English educationist and headmistress.

Olive Willis founded Downe House School and was its head for nearly forty years, from 1907 to 1946.

John Armine Olive Willis had been educated at the University of Cambridge, where he was an officer of the Cambridge University Rifle Volunteers, and he liked to take his children on climbing holidays in Switzerland.

Olive Willis later remembered that they had "suffered from a surfeit of beautiful things on an empty stomach".

At Roedean, Olive Willis objected to the lack of religious teaching, was attracted to Anglo-Catholicism, and at the age of seventeen was confirmed at the High Anglican St Cuthbert's, Earls Court, remaining a lifelong Anglican.

In 1907, with her friend Alice Carver as a non-teaching partner, Olive Willis founded a new girls' boarding school called Downe House.

Olive Willis herself taught English, Latin, Scripture, and history, while Carver was matron and kept house.

Carver withdrew from their partnership in 1912, and Olive Willis ran the school alone until 1919, when she took on a new partner called Lilian Heather, who had been at the school since 1907 as a part-time teacher of Science and Mathematics.

Olive Willis was able to move her school there just four months after the purchase, in April 1922.

Olive Willis wanted her school to be a place where "life should be normal", with some freedom and a natural pace.

In education, Olive Willis believed that girls should not try to be like boys, and she aimed at a serious attitude towards education, preparing some of her pupils for university life.

Olive Willis could be difficult to work with and knew little of housekeeping, but many of her staff, like her business partner Lilian Heather, were devoted to her.

Heather died in 1943, and in 1944 Olive Willis gave up the ownership of the school, which was transferred to a public body.

Olive Willis retired as headmistress in 1946, but intended to go on living at Hill House, which had been built for her on the school's grounds.

Olive Willis kept up with old pupils and continued her interests in the Bermondsey Time and Talents Settlement and in the Girl Guides movement.

In 1964, after living nearly twenty years in retirement, Olive Willis died from a perforated duodenal ulcer at the age of 86 at her London home.

Olive Willis was cremated, and her ashes were buried in a memorial garden at Downe House.