Year 13’s Lisa Represents The Mount at Important Joseph Rowntree Event
The Rowntree Society is marking the Centenary of Joseph Rowntree’s death with a series of events across the year including lighting up the city walls in tribute
A week ago The Rowntree Society held an event ‘Remembering Rowntree: Why Joseph’s Funeral was so remarkable’ at Friargate Quaker Meeting House with speakers including our past Head, Barbara Windle, who was a keynote Quaker speaker on Quaker funerals.
The Mount School was also proud to be represented by Lisa, Head of Rowntree House and a College II Boarder from the Ukraine. Lisa spoke about Joseph Rowntree’s impact on The Mount, our character as an educational body and wider than that, how Joseph Rowntree saw the relationship between education and creating Peace. Please read the full speech here:
Joseph Rowntree Centenary Legacy 2025 Friargate
Speech given by Lisa, College II and Head of Rowntree House
Hello everyone, I am Lisa, and I am here to speak on behalf of The Mount School and to describe the influence that Joseph Rowntree has had on our beloved Quaker school. I am a boarder from Ukraine and I am so happy to be here today to celebrate the legacy of Joseph Rowntree at The Mount School York.
This year we celebrate our 240th year at The Mount School York since we first opened our doors on Trinity Lane. When we talk about the influence of Joseph Rowntree here at The Mount, we cannot overstate the legacy that he and his wider family has had on our history, our character as a school and how it continues to influence our education today.
Our site at The Mount was sought after Joseph Rowntree Senior asked at York Quaker Quarterly Meeting whether there was still an interest in continuing a Quaker Girls School here in York in 1855. There had been a long period of illness in the city and at our former site at Castlegate and after the answer came back as a yes, Joseph Rowntree and founders settled on the site at The Mount.
The influence of the family has even entered our language at The Mount and into our school lexicon. We still call our first break, Choc Lunch, long after the tradition has ended, of the Quaker Chocolate factories giving the schoolgirls chocolate in break time.
Our School Houses are named after Quakers and chocolatiers, and I proudly speak to you today as Head of Rowntree House.
Our summer ball is still called the Strawberry Ball. This was the name of the summer ball since the time each girl was invited to the Rowntree’s and gifted a pound of strawberries each.
This year we are organising a project with seed money from The Mount School Social Service Training Endowment Fund, which was set up by Joseph Rowntree himself to enhance the education of Mount pupils. It is there to promote education in an area he felt was most important, in the promotion of social work.
The aims and ethos of the endowment fund set up by Joseph Rowntree clearly demonstrate he was a social visionary, with his desire to widen the scope of education to train Mount pupils in the social field. In 1979, Jean Rowntree who became a Trustee of the training fund wrote in an accompanying document:
“Joseph Rowntree describes the qualities needed in a social worker that “It is of utmost importance that the social worker should have a just and wide outlook on life, which would require some special teaching of History brought down to modern times, with emphasis on the condition of the people at different periods, and in different countries.”
She considers this “a plea of social history,” and of course wider than that, we can see his consideration and interest as national and international which was not at that time “a usual part of the school curriculum.”
Joseph Rowntree also sat on our school Committee and sent his daughters to The Mount. He involved himself personally in their educational projects including those which had international perspectives.
I quote Sarah Shiels, Historian and former Mount School Staff member who wrote in her Mount School’s History book “Among Friends” that in the 1920s:
“The staff of the Mount School were firm believers in the League of Nations as a force for international Peace and understanding in the future…A model meeting was held at The Mount to illustrate…speeches were written and the elderly Joseph Rowntree helped one young researcher with her speech on Serbia. She remembered ‘That was typical of Joseph Rowntree’s interest in everybody and everything, even the affairs of a schoolgirl.’
From schoolgirl to international peace, we can see how Joseph Rowntree made the connection that education is a singular tool to achieve peace and a more prosperous and fair society.
Jean Rowntree describes how Joseph Rowntree asked himself how peace could be achieved, quoting Norman Angell who said:
“Peace is not a section of certain social problems which we have to solve, not one of many. It is the basis of the whole of the democratic and social problem”
To answer this question on how to bring about Peace and why he took it upon himself to be so deeply interested in the Mount and education I leave you with the words of Joseph Rowntree. He writes:
“We shall greatly wish… “that scholars generally…may have so strong and intelligent a grasp of this great question that they may be qualified after leaving school to help in the formation of a true public opinion.”
All The Mount School York Community would like to give our great thanks to Joseph Rowntree for the depth of character and spirit he imbued, embodied and gifted our education to which we will continue to hold true. May his vision for peace through education be achieved.
Thank you.
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