“It probably sounds more exciting than it was,” says Chris, apologetically. “The coppers never did tell us the ins and outs. We got a very short press briefing saying the vicar’s daughter and her mate had been found - that they were receiving medical attention and the families appreciated being left alone. Even on a local paper it was never big news. I only remember the bits I do because I wrote a piece a few years back about the retirement of Eve Cater and the case was one she remembered as being a significant one in her career. I don’t know if I’ve got a copy of the piece. I know she got hurt, that’s about all I can remember.”
Rowan turns his head as the dust in the grate puffs up. It looks as if a giant foot has thudded into the ground outside.
“Is this Millward still with us?” asks Rowan, tightly. “He might be better with a door-knock than a phone call.”
“No, popped his clogs a few years back,” says Chris, ruefully. “Good age, though. We carried an obit. So did the Cumberland News and one of the nationals. He’d been around. Saying that, there was nobody around for him when he was going downhill towards the end. I think the care home would have ended up in court if anybody had kicked up a fuss.”
Rowan decides to say nothing. Just swishes the blood-red wine in the well of his glass and hopes to God he’s onto something.
“His number two’s still around,” says Chris, helpfully. “And I suppose after all this time there’s nothing to stop you speaking directly to the girls. They’re still local. You’ll find Catherine
through her dad, I think. He’s vicar at St Olaf’s, among others. You’ll find Derrick there too. Buried there because of his connections to the valley. It’s the smallest church in England so spaces are a premium. We carry a story every year where they appeal to people not to scatter the ashes of their loved ones in the churchyard. When there’s no breeze it starts to look like there’s been a nuclear winter! I tell you what, that place has a history worth a book…”
“It’s really good of you to help out, Chris,” says Rowan, grateful. “We should have a beer. How’s that gorgeous daughter of yours, eh?”
Chris’s tone changes. “Ah, that’s a sad one, Rowan. Poor lass. But I’m so proud of her. She’s fighting it so bravely …,”
Rowan lays his head back. Listens as Chris outlines a life so full of grief that Rowan wants to reach inside him and take it all away. Her stops listening. Types Derrick’s name into Google. Sits back, glass in hand, and begins to read.
Twenty minutes later, he drops his head back against the cushion, and breathes out slowly. This is starting to feel like something. He doesn’t believe he’s stumbled onto a genuine atrocity, but he knows he has the skills to make it sounds like one.
He reaches down and his sore skin touches the cool glass of the whisky bottle. Splashes a good measure into a mug and takes a swallow. He realises he is nodding to himself as if listening to music. He can feel a kind of nervous energy within him. He listens back to his conversation with Chris and stops it when he hears the mention of the school by the lake. The ‘hippy’ place. It takes him moments to find reference to the Silver Birch Academy online: a story in the Independent published in 1993. He rinses his mouth with the last of the whisky and dives straight in.
A Sad End for the School That Promised a Golden New Age of Education
By Nicky McKenna, education reporter
“If things had gone differently, all children would have been educated this way. It’s a source of great regret to me that we weren’t able to keep the dream alive.”
So says Phillip Tunstall, the pioneering head teacher whose holistic approach to education was the driving force behind the controversial Silver Birch Academy, which has closed its doors after almost 20 years providing ‘new age’ education.
The academy, based on the shores of Wast Water in a converted mansion house built by wealthy industrialist Steadfast Hookson, was the flagship school for the Whitecroft Trust, which has run several co-educational schools across the UK. The Trust has now been bought out by an investment partnership and Silver Birch is among the schools to be axed in a cost-cutting drive.
Mr Tunstall, who remains a Trustee within the organisation he started along with Cumbrian landowner and businessman Alan Rideal, told the Gazette that he was proud of what the school had achieved.
He said: “It’s always best to be positive – that’s what we’ve always taught. We did things our way, a holistic way, where the school’s responsibility was to fit around the pupil rather than the other way around. Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development has always been at the very heart of our philosophy and I can say with absolute certainty that we have turned out some exceptional human beings over the years. The school’s aims and philosophy regarding how pupils live their lives and learn supports them in developing mature and responsible attitudes to living in a community. Of course it is a blow that the school will close its doors but the Whitecroft approach will continue and I have not lost any of my enthusiasm. I still believe in what we started back in the Seventies, when I had lots of big ideas and even bigger hair!”
Mr Tunstall, 51, has been at the helm since the school’s opening in 1974. Backed by philanthropist Alan Rideal, it has never had more than 40 pupils on roll at any time and has actively resisted the normal monitoring and evaluation processes, preferring to offer a ‘holistic’ approach to education favoured by pioneering educators overseas.
While some pupils have attended from the local Lake District community, many have been boarding pupils whose families were attracted to the first-rate facilities with the emphasis on a ‘home from home’, and ‘universalist’ approach to development. The school’s philosophy was that pupils learned more when free from coercion, so many lessons were optional. The timetable was flexible, allowing pupils to pick and choose the times they felt most inclined to learn, but were encouraged to participate in meditation, yoga and mindfulness sessions alongside curriculum-based activities.
“All in all, we’ve done a lot of what we set out to do, but I think I would be lying if I didn’t say that it hurts to see the doors close. I have a memory of the three of us standing in front of this ruin of a house and knowing what we wanted to do and how to do it. I’d like to thank the many people who have helped me to fill my head with such wonderful memories.”
The school has not been without its controversies. The local education authority has been at constant loggerheads with the school over its refusal to allow inspectors to see pupil records, while in 1989 the Times ran an exclusive story on alleged irregularities with the Trust’s finances, claiming that the families of some pupils were paying three times as much as others to attend the school, while so-called ‘scholarships and bursaries’ seemed to be given out without any fixed criteria.
Copeland MP Jack Guinness said: “I’ve always admired what they were trying to do at Silver Birch but we need to have a uniformity of education in this country – a standard start for each of us. For all of its talk of inclusivity this was an elitist school that went out of its way to keep the authorities from becoming too involved.”