Wakefield Museums and Castles

In this special post, our brilliant Research Volunteer, Katie, tells us about her experience tracing the life of Alice Gostick, an influential local art teacher, who worked at Castleford School from 1911 - 1930.

(Original article written 13 April 2022)

Born in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, Staffordshire in 1875, Miss Alice Gostick was later to move to Castleford and become the art teacher for Henry Moore, one of the most influential sculptors of his time. But what about Alice herself? My task as a Research Volunteer was to investigate Alice and find out more about her life aside from teaching Moore. However, finding information on Miss Gostick was no easy feat.

Initially, I was advised to start my research by browsing the family history website, Find My Past. This website is a phenomenal resource, which includes copies from censuses, birth, marriage and death records, the 1939 Register and more. As I had not used this site before, I needed some time to become familiar with how to navigate the records. However, this did not take long as the site is certainly user-friendly.

From here, I was able to gain an understanding of Alice’s early life. Her parents were Clair (b.1845) and Arthur Gostick (b.1844). She had one older sister named Constance (b.1874) and one younger brother named Frank (b.1878). Before Alice moved to Castleford and began teaching at Castleford School, she worked as an Art Mistress in Staffordshire and lived with her sister.

There were some difficulties with using Find My Past. As the site has all public records, there were some occasions where my search would return multiple people called Alice Gostick, which required some figuring out to ensure I was using the correct record. For example, there were several Alice Gosticks, who may have died at around the same time. Additionally, the site does not have any qualitative data, so I could not find much information about Alice as a person.

As there was not any marriage record for Alice, that led me to believe that she remained unmarried. This idea was furthered when I began to read biographies on Henry Moore that had some information on Alice. In Roger Berthoud’s The Life of Henry Moore (1987), Alice was noted to have lived with a ‘companion’ rather than spouse until her death. Alice is referred to on numerous occasions in this study. Interestingly, she was noted by Berthoud to be,

‘a pleasant looking woman with brown hair, full of enthusiasm yet gentle and generous.’

I was surprised to learn that Alice invited her students to her home and remained friends with Henry Moore until her death, decades after she had taught him at school.