Lucy Harrison

Lucy Harrison (17 January 1844 – 15 May 1915) was a teacher at Bedford College School, and later founder and then head of Gower Street School for Girls and then The Mount School, York.

Early life Emma Lucy Harrison, known as Lucy, was born on 17 January 1844 in Birkenhead, England, as the youngest of eight children of Daniel Harrison and his wife, Anna Botham of Uttoxeter. When Harrison was five years old, her family went to live at Springfield, Egremont. Enrolment at the school grew under her leadership.

During these busy years of teaching, Harrison did much outside work of various kinds, the most strenuous perhaps being that at the Working Women's College, and her work in connection with her friend Octavia Hill's scheme for the housing of the poor. She collected weekly rents, and in various ways came into personal touch with some of the London poor. Lucy Harrison's sister, Mary Harrison, became Octavia Hill's special friend. and like Harrison adopted a short, signifying female independence.

After nearly twenty years' connection with the Gower Street School, Harrison's health broke down and she determined to give up her work and carry out the plan she had for years in her mind, to build a little house and live in the country. Her ambition from girlhood had been to own a piece of land and build herself a house and have a garden and a library. Her thoughts turned to Wensleydale, the remote Yorkshire valley where her father was born. Hence in the summer of 1883 she went with her widowed sister, Mrs. Macdonell, to Bainbridge for several weeks. They visited the old family house at Countersett, dated 1650, with Reuben Harrison's name scratched on one of the window-panes. She made many inquiries about a suitable plot of freehold land available for building purposes, and at length she found for sale on the Hawes Road a field of four acres. This was "Cupples Field", which she ultimately bought, and during the next two years her great interest was the planning of her house and garden. The building was not actually begun till 1885. John Bentley, the well-known architect who built the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Westminster, made the plans.