My mother, Gwen Bryson, who has died aged 96, was the first female junior school headteacher in Ipswich. She enjoyed a long teaching career in Suffolk, including three headships.
Born in Ipswich, she grew up in poverty. Her father, Thomas Hobbs, suffered a shrapnel headwound and shell shock in the Somme in the first world war and became a PoW in Germany. After demob he was never able to hold down full-time employment. Her mother, Ellen (nee Garnham), was disabled after receiving poor medical care for a broken leg in childhood.
In the early 1930s, the family lived in a farm cottage in Clopton, near Woodbridge, drawing drinking water from a pond because their farmer landlord refused them access to water.
Encouraged by her mother and teachers, Gwen won a scholarship at Northgate grammar school for girls in Ipswich, followed by a place at St Katherine’s College for teacher training in Tottenham, north London (now part of Middlesex University). She started just when it was being evacuated to Babbacombe, Devon, during the second world war.
While there she met Sydney Bryson, then a Royal Navy able seaman based at Devonport, at a dance at St Marychurch town hall in Torbay, which she decided to go to just on a whim.
They married after the war and settled in Ipswich, where they had two children. Life was still hard, and at one point my mother had to cope with my sister being in an isolation ward with polio while our father was in a Norfolk sanatorium recovering from TB.
Nevertheless, her teaching career took off. After working briefly in Plymouth and Suffolk schools, she started at Whitton Junior school, Ipswich (now the Beeches school) in 1952. Six years later she became deputy headteacher at Robeck Road school. In 1966 she was appointed headteacher at Luther Road primary school. After being offered the job, she overheard two other applicants discussing it outside. “A bloody woman has been appointed,” said one to the other.
Further headships followed at Hillside primary in Ipswich and Causton primary in Felixstowe. She believed strongly that children in disadvantaged areas should not miss out on the chance to do art and crafts at school. Her corridors were always full of children’s artwork. She taught pottery by firing the children’s pots in a hole dug into the field. She was also a generous and inspiring boss who encouraged and mentored staff in their careers.
After retiring in 1985, she set about a prodigiously productive 36-year retirement, moving to Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, to be closer to family and pursuing many artistic endeavours, including establishing her much-loved Isbourne patchwork group.
Sydney died in 1979. She is survived by their children, Celia and me, and by eight grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
