Mrs. Kimmins

Chailey is 20th century, an achievement but a generation old, built up by the zeal of a woman as remarkable in her own world as Florence Nightingale in hers. She is Mrs Kimmins.

It all began with a book, Mrs Ewing's Story of a Short Life. Mrs Kimmins had the idea of putting the spirit of it into a Guild of the Brave Poor Things. It was one of those small seeds which may fall on hard ground or may grow a hundredfold, and Mrs Kimmins set it in a garden where it has grown almost beyond belief.

She found the old windmill and an old workhouse empty, and she dreamed that she would set the windmill working and make the workhouse ring with music and laughter and the joy of life. She has seen both her dreams come true. Mrs Kimmins arrived at the old workhouse with seven cripple boys and a penny notebook to keep her accounts.

She has spent three quarters of a million pounds since then, and has sent out into the world thousands of cripples who can live useful lives and be a burden to no one. She has made the Heritage Craft School of Chailey the Public School of Crippledom.

Here we are concerned with what there is to see (and at Chailey only, for the long line of delightful huts run by the Heritage at Tidemills, as long as St Paul's and close to the sea, hardly comes into this picture).

The wooden huts have grown into fine buildings designed by Mr Comper, a boy's block by the windmill, a girl's block across the heath. Benefactor after benefactor has come to the aid of these Brave Poor Things, so that here is now a colony of nearly 300 of the happiest and busiest people anywhere.

We found Sir Michael Hedges among all these happy boys, and we are sure that our gallant Admiral in all his life had seen nothing that pleased him more. We found St Martin everywhere, in windows and over doorways and in the Douty Song School, and we were not surprised, for it seemed to us that all her life Mrs Kimmins has been dividing her cloak with a cripple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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