Ena May Neill

Neill was born in 1910 in West Malling. Her parents were Ethel Sophie May and Ernest George Wooff. Her father worked for a grocer. She had started to train as a nurse but she abandoned that career to marry a commercial artist named Bill (William Albert) Wood. The marriage did not last and their son, Peter, was sent to Summerhill School.[1]

She became a cook at Summerhill School after she told the head of her plan to move to America with Peter and that role of cook expanded.[2] The school was moved to Ffestiniog in Wales during the war and the head's first wife "Mrs Lin" was ill and Neill became her nurse until she died in 1944. She became a housemother[3] and she was increasingly running the school gathering management skills.[2] She was married to the school's founder, A. S. Neill on 14 April 1945. He and the school were synonymous with Summerhill being a "free" school where pupils could optionally attend classes.[1] Their only daughter was born in 1946.[4]

One of their first tasks was to move the school back from Wales to its former building in Leiston where it had been since 1927. The school buildings had been used by the army and they were not left in a good state to be a school. The buildings had to be restored and cleaned up. The school's approach was controversial and it relied on the support of leading intellectuals including the philosopher Bertrand Russell.[3] In 1960 there were just 25 pupils at the school when its profile was improved by the publication of her husband's book about the school which sold two million copies.[1]

In 1970 her husband had told her to run the school. When he died in 1973 she became the head of the school officially and she ran it until 1985.[2] She was succeeded by her daughter Zoe Readhead who had attended the school.[5] Her daughter explained that although her father had the reputation of being a benign leader it was her mother who established a level of order in the school.[2]

Neill died in Aldeburgh in 1997.[1]