George Mearns Savery

George Mearns Savery (2 March 1850 – 2 March 1905) was an English headteacher. He was the principal of Ripon Road College, Bilton (later known as Harrogate College). He founded Harrogate Ladies' College, in Harrogate, North Yorkshire and, in collaboration with headmistress Elizabeth Wilhelmina Jones, expanded the school in the light of contemporary ideas about what a girls' school should be, planning "everything for the best ... which would do in the lives of women what public schools for boys [had] done for men". and was the third of nine siblings. He was educated at Kingswood School, Bath, and Queen's College, Taunton. On 20 June 1879 at the Temple Chapel, Taunton, Somerset, he married Caroline Amelia Sibly, daughter of Thomas Sibly. Savery and his wife had three children.

Career Academic career Savery received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Lincoln College, Oxford in 1876, and his Master of Arts in 1880, being president of the Oxford Union Society in 1876. Beginning while still an undergraduate, between at least 1871 and 1881 Savery was a classics tutor, senior master and housemaster at the Wesleyan College (now Queen's College, Taunton) in Somerset. In 1885 he was appointed headmaster of Ripon Road College, later called Harrogate College, He is remembered today for the 1893 foundation and initial proprietorship of Harrogate Ladies' College.

Harrogate College for boys

This school was founded and built in 1863–1864 by William Henry Heigham, The school had a roll of around eighty boys including boarders, and was a "substantial stone building with a tower and battlements", according to Hewlett. Heigham died in 1883, but it closed in 1903.

In 1881 Savery's brother Samuel Servington Savery, aged 20 years, was attending this school as a scholar. The school closed in 1903. The Yorkshire Post commented that it was, "the product of a pioneer mind, an inspired adventure in building ... [Savery was] the first to see in Yorkshire an opening for a girls' public school of the first class ... His distinction was that he saw it [in 1893]". She was an Ulster-born graduate of Queen's College, Belfast, a form mistress at Bradford Girls' Grammar School, then headmistress at Harrogate Ladies' College from September 1898 to 1935.

Ground was broken in 1902, and the building was opened on 17 May 1904. In this building, according to the Yorkshire Post, Savery and Jones planned "everything for the best ... which would do in the lives of women what public schools for boys [had] done for men".

As described the by Yorkshire Post, the ideals of Savery and Jones for the school were, "advancement in scholastic matters, the promotion of physical well-being, [and] the infusion of a fine moral and spiritual tone". They rejected ideas of "domination of ideas for the education of boys", the bluestocking, the hausfrau and the finishing school, in favour of potential female careers, "mental and moral training [and] personal responsibility", public duty, and home-making including "pride in the beauty and order of the home". Those ideals of 1901 would, of course, be superseded in certain respects in later years. and at one point he was chairman of Harrogate Literary Society. In Leeds in 1887, in connection with the Wesleyan Institute, Savery gave a lecture on "The Art of Reading and Speaking". The Methodist Times reported that the lecture was "highly entertaining, abounding, as it did, in illustrations of various styles of speaking, given with remarkable skill". He was buried at Harlow Hill Cemetery, Harrogate. The Yorkshire Post (1933) said that his early death "denied him a view of the full fruition of his plans and robbed education of a great pioneer". The Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette said, "he was one of the pioneers of the education of girls in this country. Former Harrogate College pupil Bertrand Watson declared that his life was influenced by Savery, who was a "powerful personality and one to whom the term disciplinarian could be applied, but in him we saw the ideal of perfect justice being lived up to most successfully".