[1] Bennell entered the boarding school for girls at Crouch End, London at an early age, for her mother died when she was still a child.
She encountered Waldorf education, most probably through her friend Margaret McMillan,[2] attending the later conferences following the founding of the “New School” in Streatham, London in January 1925, that was to become Michael Hall.
Norbert and Maria Glas, both doctors, also joined the College of Teachers and they were regularly visited by Walter Johannes Stein and Violetta Plincke.
As the bomb attacks during the war mounted, student numbers rose rapidly in their secluded rural setting, amongst them many immigrant children who had fled Germany.
As a result of her increasing deafness, teaching children became difficult, leading her to step out of the school and join a friend, Lily Whincop, who owned an old Manor, Hawkwood House in nearby Stroud.