Berse Drelincourt School and the Education of Women

31/03/2026

Berse Drelincourt School and the Education of Women

In April 1876 a brand-new cemetery on Ruabon Road was opened in Wrexham in North Wales. This year is its 150^th anniversary and so it seems fitting to mark this with my latest blog and also to dedicate it for Women’s History Month.

This blog will take us on a journey starting at the gravestone of a woman who is buried here and will incorporate the education of women and the role of a Wrexham woman in the Jacobite Rebellion.

Close to one of the paths in the cemetery is a gravestone to Catherine Castle and it reads,

In Loving Memory

of

Catherine Castle

28 years Mistress

of Berse Drelincourt School

who died October 26^th 1887

I have fought a good fight,

I have finished my course,

I have kept the faith : Tim. 4. 7.

This stone is erected by

friends and scholars

Who was Catherine Castle who seems to have been so well thought of by her friends and scholars, and what was the Berse Drelincourt School?

Catherine Castle was born in Malta in about 1810, she appears in the census for 1851 living in the High Street in Wye, Kent and is listed as a National School Mistress. Wye is a village located between Ashford and Canterbury and was funded with a charity school in 1708 by the will of Lady Joanna Thornhill. The current primary school still carries her name.

On the census of 1861 Catherine Castle is listed as the Matron and Teacher at an endowed school in Broughton, Wrexham, North Wales adjacent to Berse Drelincourt. There are a number of boarders listed on the census, all of them are female and aged between seven and thirteen years.

So, this is a charity school for girls and Catherine is in charge. At some point she has left her post in Kent and has travelled to Wrexham to take up her post here in Broughton to oversee the school.

On the 1871 census Catherine Castle is again listed as Matron and School Mistress and the school is named as Berse Drelincourt School. A number of girls are listed as scholars, mostly they are from the local area around Wrexham but Jessie Blackwell stands out as being from Glasgow in Scotland (although her family had probably moved to Wrexham at some point, possibly for employment).

On the 1881 census Catherine Castle is still listed as being Matron and School Mistress but this time she has her niece Jane Elizabeth Castle visiting her from London. Jane Elizabeth is listed as being seventeen years old.

In 1887 Catherine Castle dies, and an obituary in the Wrexham Advertiser stated, “…She was always most patient, painstaking, and conscientious in the discharge of her duties in the schoolroom and no child ever came under her care who was not greatly benefited by it. But, while ever faithful to her duties there, it was in the home that she shone the brightest. There her motherly care and true Christian virtues ever surrounded the orphan children in her charge, with more than a mother’s love.”

However, it would appear that the Castle family are not done with Berse Drelincourt School, for in the 1891 census Jane Elizabeth is listed as School Teacher. On this census the girls are listed as ‘children in orphan school’. Once again, they are mostly from the local area but we have one listed from Manchester and one from London.

On the following three census in 1901, 1911 and 1921 Jane Elizabeth is following in the footsteps of her aunt Catherine as the School Teacher at Berse Drelincourt. The entries on the census for 1911 inform us that the girls are either trained for domestic service or are scholars. Jane Elizabeth dies on 13^th October, 1929. Assuming that Jane Elizabeth took over following her aunt’s death in 1887 she will have given the school at least 35 years of service, a longer term of loyalty than even her aunt.

Two remarkable women who gave long and loyal service for most of their lives to the orphan school of Berse Drelincourt and its girls.

But what was the Berse Drelincourt school and who founded it? Looking into the history of the school we find the story of the women who founded it even more remarkable.

The Berse Drelincourt School was founded by Mary Drelincourt on her estate near Wrexham in North Wales in 1719 as a school and orphanage for twenty poor girls of the Diocese. Mary Drelincourt had been born in Wrexham to Peter and Margaret Morris around 1678. She married Peter Drelincourt who was Dean of Armagh and who left a sum of money in his will for charitable projects.

Their daughter Anne Drelincourt married Hugh, 3^rd Viscount Primrose (or Primerose) and became Lady Primrose. Following her marriage and the death of her mother in 1755, Lady Primrose continued with charitable works including supporting the Berse Drelincourt School. She seems to have been responsible for selecting both the scholars and the teachers for the school and for devising the curriculum which was mainly learning to be a good housewife!

The school was endowed to take in orphaned girls from the local area in order to educate and train them and as we have seen from the 1911 census they would have been trained for domestic service. Most of the girls would have been local but as we have already noted from the census they also came from further afield. Following the death of Lady Ann the trustees would have been responsible for selecting the pupils for the school.

Following her death, Lady Primerose was buried at the Church of St Giles in Wrexham with her husband Viscount Primerose who predeceased her in 1741. There is a brass plaque on a pillar in the south aisle of the church which states, “Here lies the body of Hugh Lord Viscount Primerose and Ann his wife.”

Although based in London, Lady Anne spent considerable time at her house at Berse outside of Wrexham. She was also a prominent supporter of the Jacobites and the Young Pretender, who she assisted financially, and of Flora MacDonald who apparently, she provided with a dowry.

Locally there were rumours that the school may have been used to hide and educate Jacobite orphans following 1745. If this is the case, then the girl from Glasgow listed in the 1871 census was following in the footsteps of previous children from her homeland who were sheltered and schooled there.

The Berse Drelincourt School in Berse is no more but is now a private house. So far, I have not been able to ascertain exactly when the school closed. I have read some reports that the last pupils attended in the late 1920s, which would make Jane Elizabeth Castle the last school mistress, but I have read another report that girls from Berse Drelincourt were still attending the Berse chapel into the 1950s. There is an entry on the catalogue of the North East Wales Archives that relates to the Berse Drelincourt Charity School Admission Register and dated 1843 to 1967. So perhaps the school went on in some form until the late 1960s.

However, until recently the name lived on. Another Drelincourt School had been opened in 1738 in Armagh by Mary Drelincourt. Sadly, it was deemed as unsustainable and earmarked for closure at the end of the school year 2025. 278 years of history would be lost but what a remarkable legacy these schools had been for the Drelincourt family and their memory.

Come back on the 30thApril for my next blog from Hawarden and Parkgate

Berse Drelincourt School and the Education of Women

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