A school in Beaconsfield that started with just 20 pupils in the 1920s is celebrating its 90th birthday this year more than 320.

High March School was founded in 1926 by two trained teachers, Miss Edith Warr and Miss Florence Perkins, who came out of London and bought a house called High March on Station Road, Beaconsfield. 

Within a year, they “outgrew” the house in Station Road and moved to 23 Ledborough Lane in 1927, before opening a kindergarten in 1929 and expanding again until they had three houses.

By 1948, the school had 200 pupils and Belinda Avery, one of the school’s directors, said they all looked up to Miss Warr and Miss Perkins.

She said: “We are a very traditional school. The school motto is ‘kindness and friendship’ and that was a major theme for Miss Warr and Miss Perkins. There is lots to say about them both, they were a great double act.

“Miss Warr was seen as quite an inspiration, quite an avant-garde educationalist and I think she handed on those values which is good to know.”

Former pupils also have vivid memories of the former head teachers, including Pamela Carr, who remembers a school trip to Bruges in March 1939 with Miss Warr.

She said: “Quite apart from the hazards of taking a group of 10 to 11 year olds to a foreign country in the days before regular school trips abroad, it was a time of political tension caused by Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia.

"We saw the Belgian military out on the streets. I found out later that at some point due to the political crisis and the threat of war, Miss Warr thought she might have to bring us home early.

"She telegraphed my father, the Military Attache in the Hague and Military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph who answered her “situation definitely less acute”.

"So we stayed in Bruges.”

Mrs Avery’s grandparents, Robert and Del Anderson, took over the school when Miss Warr and Miss Perkins decide to retire in 1948 and the school has been family-run ever since.

She said: “My grandmother loved poetry and our grandfather Bob Anderson taught Latin. They headed the school up for a combined 60 years.

“My mother taught reception and now my brother and I are very involved as directors. We have seven children between us who have all been through the school.

“It is very much a family concern.”