History of St Luke's

Charlotte Hippisley-Tuckfield was the wife of the High Sheriff of Devon in the early nineteenth century, and was a woman with a keen interest in education. She lived with her husband at Little Fulford (now Shobrooke Park) near Crediton, and in 1835 she arranged for the lodge at nearby Posbury House to be converted into a training centre for schoolmasters.  Adjoining the lodge a chapel was built, and on 18th October 1836 it was consecrated by the Bishop of Exeter and dedicated to St Luke. The curate of the chapel undertook to train the teachers in the experimental school.

Two years later, on 23rd October 1838, the Exeter Diocesan Board of Education resolved, at its very first meeting in the Chapter House, to found an Institution for the Education and Training of Schoolmasters - the first such initiative in England. As a result, in 1839 the Exeter Diocesan Training College was created in Cathedral Close, Exeter at the former house of the Archdeacon of Totnes. In September of that year the first Principal was appointed and it opened in 1840, with the first intake of nineteen students taught by three teaching staff.

In 1853 John Hayward (who was later responsible for the Royal Albert Memorial Museum) was commissioned to design a purpose built premises for the college on Heavitree Road. The cost would be £7,000, some of which was funded by the Acland's of Killerton. The building, largely in grey limestone from Torbay with Bath stone dressings, was completed by the autumn of the following year. And on 18th October 1854, after a service in the Cathedral, a grand procession marched through Exeter in the pouring rain for the opening ceremony of the new buildings. The name at the time was still the Exeter Diocesan Training College but from this date in 1854 (St Luke’s Day) it was unofficially known as St Luke’s. The intake in 1854 was 40 students.

St Luke's College, as such, ceased to exist in 1978. At that point the site and its buildings, with the exception of the chapel, were taken over by the University of Exeter. By contrast its history is wholly secular, originating out of the initiative to celebrate the educational and scientific work of Prince Albert by setting up a number of Royal Albert Memorial Museums. In Exeter's case this opened in 1868 in the appropriately named Queen Street. The Royal Albert Memorial School, built in Gandy Street behind the main building and now the Phoenix Arts Centre, became the precursor of the University (hence the nickname of "the RAMS").

The training of teachers at the university goes back only to 1912 when 25 women day students were enrolled. From that small initiative within Arts and Sciences was to grow a Department, an Institute of Education (of which St Luke's College was a constituent member) and a separate department of Extra Mural Studies. Finally a Faculty incorporating all aspects of the University's relations with the region's educational came into being and it was that which took over the St Luke's campus in 1978.

Within this very brief outline of the physical history of institutions lies the whole history of educational development in England. In the first instance the emphasis of training was very much on the person. For example when the Chancellor of Exeter Cathedral presided at the stone laying of the new college in 1853 his sermon included the passage,

We must remember that it is not only mere instruction which we want in our schools: it is that formation of character by moral influences which can only be effected by those who have been not only instructed but morally trained themselves ..to govern their pupils by gaining their affection and to illustrate good instruction by good example."

Nor was the secular University College any less concerned with the character of intending teachers, as well as with their academic qualifications. Brian Clapp, in his history of Exeter University notes that the early department of day students,

very properly insisted that landladies should provide a warm well-lit room for evening study. It also required landladies to record in a diary the time at which students returned to their lodgings if they came in after 9 p.m; if a student came in after 11 p.m. her landlady was to report her to the college the next day. No student was to go out after 10 p.m. without college approval."

Things, of course, have undergone huge changes in the intervening decades although most would argue that the basic principle remains, even if the circumstances and the examples have dramatically altered. Teachers remain major moral influences.

What has also changed is the content of the courses. For many years a great deal of teacher training took the form of the encouragement of creative thinking. Teachers were responsible, at least until the years of public examinations, for their own syllabuses. Much time was spent in experimenting with what today we would call curriculum content and there was a great deal of local variation in demands and expectations. That all disappeared with the 1988 Education Reform Act and the introduction of a National Curriculum. Nowadays there is perhaps more emphasis on communication skills in all its exciting forms with the coming of new technologies.

Nevertheless, the past has not altogether been dispensed with. At Exeter the history and the philosophy of Education continue to exert an influence. Economic concerns may play a larger part in our consciousness than formerly and we are all aware that preparedness for future employment is a key concern of all young people. At the same time those original areas such as religion, morality and citizenship, whilst no longer predominating, continue to feature in the education and training of all teacher trainees and, in their wisdom, try to point to that sense of wholeness without which education can so easily be become mere training and knowledge be reduced to mere information.