While she was at the training college, she successfully organised in her second year a women’s club for providing student amenities such as provision of common rooms and proper meals.
This meant working in remote villages, travelling by train, bicycle or pony-and-trap, talking to teachers and giving lessons to small groups of receptive boys and girls.
After a summer term as a temporary lecturer at Bingley College in Yorkshire, in 1919 she became Warden of a Hall of Residence for teachers in training in Bristol University.
After some years of this “lonely and strenuous” work (it involved frequent changes of location, and dealing with sometimes resentful head teachers), she fell ill and returned to her cottage in Shennington that she shared with her lifelong friend Margaret Philips.
In 1933 she applied for and was appointed to the post of Principal of the Residential College for Working Women, usually known as Hillcroft from the name of its house at Surbiton.
The college provided a year’s course of liberal education for women who had to leave school early, but who had since shown an interest in and capacity for further study.