Ladies Hall in
Deptford, London is thought to have been the first girls' school in England. Founded in approximately 1615 by Robert White, the school was for aristocratic girls connected with the royal court, and they performed before
Queen Anne in May 1617. The school taught basic reading and writing in English, and it is likely they covered other skills a lady was encouraged to acquire, in music, dance, and needlework. Archival evidence for the school and its pupils beyond the published text of Robert White's masque is sparse.
One of the young women who danced in Robert White's ''Masque of Cupid's Banishment'' at Deptford in May 1617 was Anne Sandilands, thought to be a daughter of the Scottish courtier
Sir James Sandilands of Slamannan Mure. The masque was performed while
James VI and I was in Scotland, and it has been suggested that it was subversive of the king's authority, after he refused to make Anna of Denmark regent in his absence.
One of
Anne Newdigate's daughters, Lettice Newdigate (1604-1625), attended the Ladies Hall or a school in Deptford in July 1617. Her portrait, aged 2, at
Arbury Hall
Arbury Hall () is a Grade I listed country house in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, and the ancestral home of the Newdigate family, later the Newdigate-Newdegate and Fitzroy-Newdegate families.
History
The hall is built on the site of the ...
, is one of the earliest depictions of an English
knot garden.
I. A. Shapiro doubted the existence of Ladies' Hall as a school, believing that it may simply have been where the young gentlewomen attending Anne of Denmark's ladies-in-waiting were housed, and that the ladies there had joined together to perform a play.
Review of English Studies
''The Review of English Studies'' is an academic journal published by Oxford University Press covering English literature and the English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earli ...
, (1970) XXI (84), pp. 472-473.
References
Educational institutions established in the 1610s
1615 establishments in England
Defunct schools in the London Borough of Lewisham
Women in London
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