merchant James Butler Clough and Anne (née Perfect). James Butler Clough was a younger son of a landed gentry family that had been living at Plas Clough in Derbyshire since 1567. Anne's brother, Arthur Hugh Clough was the poet and assistant to Florence Nightingale. In 1822 the family moved to Charleston in South Carolina but returned to Liverpool in 1836 with the three sons being sent to private schools but Anne was educated at home by her mother. This was common for middle and upper class women of the time. In adolescence she was torn by the expectations of her social class that as a woman she should be married, have children and look after the home despite her own wishes to become an independant, educated woman. On the eve of her 21st birthday she wrote, "I would like never to be forgotten...but I am only a woman." Her brother Arthur, who was later to become professor of English Literature at University College, London, took a keen interest in Anne's education in directing her studies and under his influence she began to visit and teach the poor. She took work as a volunteer in a Liverpool charity school and became determined to run a school of her own eventually.
After James Clough's business failed in 1841, although her ambition was to write, Anne set up a small day school in Liverpool to contribute financially in helping pay off the family debts, whilst also fulfilling her interest in education. The school opened in January 1842 but
it attracted few children. Anne had doubts about her abilities as a
teacher and in May 1843, wrote in her journal: "I fear I mismanage the
children; however, I must try to do better."
Anne carried on until 1846 and in 1852, after taking some technical studies in London and working at the Borough Road School and the Home and Colonial School Society, she opened another small school of her own at Ambleside in Westmorland for the local children and boarders at Eller How. In 1863 Anne handed her school on to her assistant and moved to
Surrey. Her beloved brother, Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet, had died at
the age of 42 and she felt duty-bound to support her widowed sister-in-law
Blanche in bringing up three small children. The youngest of these, Blanche Athena Clough would follow in her aunt’s footsteps and herself become a notable educationalist. Keenly
interested in the education of women, she made friends with Miss Emily Davies, Madame Barbara Bodichon, Miss Frances Buss
and others who formed the London Society for Women's Suffrage. She drew on her Eller How
experience, however, in giving evidence to a Royal Commission on
secondary schooling; and through her friendship with Blanche’s cousin,
Alice Bonham Carter, was drawn into more general campaigns for the
transformation of the education of women. Her scheme for peripatetic
lecturers was the germ of the University Extension Movement.
After helping to found the North of England council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women, she acted as its secretary from
1867 to 1870 and as its president from 1873 to 1874.
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| Anne Clough Memorial gate Newnham |
When it was decided to open a house for the residence of women students at Cambridge University, Anne was invited by Henry Sidgwick to be its first principal. This hostel, started in Regent Street, Cambridge, in 1871 with five students, continuing at Merton Hall in 1872 with Anne being involved in everything, from the negotiations with St John’s to lease the land,
through to the care of sick students. This led to the building of Newnham Hall, opened in 1875, and to the erection of Newnham College in 1880. Anne Clough's personal charm and high
aims, together with the development. of Newnham College under her care,
led her to be regarded as one of the foremost leaders of the women's
educational movement. She also helped to establish the University Association of Assistant
Mistresses (1882), the Cambridge Training College for Women (1885), and
the Women's University Settlement in Southwark (1887).
The College Council named the largest of the Halls, completed in
1887, Clough Hall in her honour and following her death in Cambridge on 27 February 1892, her old
students and friends commissioned from Basil Champneys the handsome
wrought-iron gates which stand at the head of Newnham Walk. Those in
Liverpool who had supported her early work for women’s education
contributed to the Liverpool Clough Scholarship funds.
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