Marcia Rice

Marcia Alice Rice (5 December 1868 – 22 April 1958) was a British headmistress and historian. She was the head of the girls' School of S. Mary and S. Anne which became Abbots Bromley School. Life Rice was born in Edinburgh on 5 December 1868. She was a Scottish episcopalian and the second child of Frances Anne Napier and Lieutenant-Colonel Cecil Rice of the Seaforth Highlanders. She was taught at home learning Latin and Greek. She sent to Oxford to study English and St Hugh's College gave her an "excellent first". Rice had natural authority and good humour and her progress was rapid. She spent a year as house mistress at Godolphin School in Salisbury before she became the headteacher of the School of S. Anne in Abbots Bromley in 1900. She succeeded Alice Mary Coleridge who had founded the two schools there. Her school (S. Anne) had 54 pupils. Immediately opposite was the School of S. Mary which had also been founded by Alice Mary Coleridge to cater for girls whose parents could only afford more modest fees and it had a different head teacher. Her school was divided into houses. In 1903 she was an attendant when one of staff, Edith Amy Isabelle Benett Wollaston, married an architect Isaac Taylor. Taylor became the school's architect. It had expanded to over 100 girls by 1913 and the school had gained nearby property to allow for expansion of an infirmary, chapel cloisters and more accommodation. In 1905 the school gained a debating Society "St Anne's Political and Social Problems Club" and in 1910 the first school prefects were appointed as some authority was delegated from the staff to the pupils.