The Malting House School (also known as the Malting House Garden School) was an experimental educational institution that operated from 1924 to 1929. It was set up by the eccentric and, at the time, wealthy Geoffrey Pyke in his family home in Cambridge and it was run by Susan Sutherland Isaacs. Although it was open for only a few years, the radical ideas explored in this institution have remained influential up until the present day. Since 2004 it is owned by Darwin College, Cambridge and used as accommodation.
Premises
The Malting House is a building in Cambridge on the corner of Newnham Road and Malting Lane in and overlooks the Mill Pond and Sheep's Green. It was originally a malthouse, Oast house, and small brewery owned, in the 1830s, by the Beales family, a well-known Cambridge trading dynasty. In 1909, the then Dean of Trinity College (Dr Stewart) bought the buildings and converted most of them into an Arts & Crafts house and two or three years later the remaining buildings were converted into a small hall to host musical evenings. From 1924 to 1929 it was the Malting House School. In later years the house reverted to a family home. In 2003, the buildings were purchased by Darwin College of Cambridge University to serve as student accommodation, the cost of purchase and conversion being estimated as £1.5M.
Maurice and Sylia Dobb lived in a cottage behind the Malting House – he had a position at Trinity College – Ludwig Wittgenstein was lodging with them at the time, at the invitation of Bertrand Russell.
Creation
Geoffrey Pyke came to public attention when he escaped from internment in Germany during World War I. He had travelled to Germany under a false passport but he was soon arrested and interned. The story of his escape and return to Britain was widely published. In March 1918, Pyke met Margaret Amy Chubb; she was intelligent, pretty, and attracted to Pyke's unconventional good looks and wilful unconventionality. They were married within three months of meeting. After the war, Pyke tried his hand at a number of money-making schemes. For a while, he made a lot of money speculating on the commodity market using his own system of financial management instead of more conventional techniques.
Geoffrey Pyke and Margaret Pyke had a son, David (1921–2001). Geoffrey Pyke became preoccupied by the question of his son's education. He wanted to create an education that promoted curiosity and equipped young people to live in the twentieth century – an education that would be utterly different from his own unhappy experience. To do this he set up an infants' school in his Cambridge home. Founded in October 1924, the school was funded by Pyke's City speculations. His wife, Margaret, was a strong supporter of the school and its ideas.
Pyke placed advertisements in a number of journals, including the New Statesman and Nature:
WANTED—an Educated Young Woman with honours degree—preferably first class—or the equivalent, to conduct education of a small group of children aged 2-1/2–7, as a piece of scientific work and research.
Previous educational experience is not considered a bar, but the advertisers hope to get in touch with a university graduate—or someone of equivalent intellectual standing—who has hitherto considered themselves too good for teaching and who has probably already engaged in another occupation.
A LIBERAL SALARY—liberal as compared with research work or teaching—will be paid to a suitable applicant who will live out, have fixed hours and opportunities for a pleasant independent existence. An assistant will be provided if the work increases.
They wish to obtain the services of someone with certain personal qualifications for the work and a scientific attitude of mind towards it. Hence a training in any of the natural sciences is a distinct advantage.
Preference will be given to those who do not hold any form of religious belief but this is not by itself considered to be a substitute for other qualifications.
Pyke recruited psychologist Susan Sutherland Isaacs to run the school; although Pyke had many original ideas regarding education, he promised her, that he would not interfere.