Olive Willis

Olive Willis
Born	Olive Margaret Willis 26 October 1877 65 Thistle Grove, Kensington, London
Died	11 March 1964 38, Tedworth Square, Chelsea, London
Cause of death	perforated duodenal ulcer
Resting place	Downe House School
Education	Roedean School
Alma mater	Somerville College, Oxford
Occupation	Headmistress
Known for	founding Downe House School
Net worth	£16,510 (at death)
Parent(s)	John Armine Willis (1839–1916) Janet Willis, née Crawford

Olive Margaret Willis (26 October 1877 – 11 March 1964) was an English educationist and headmistress. She founded Downe House School and was its head for nearly forty years, from 1907 to 1946.

Willis was born in 1877 at 65 Thistle Grove, Kensington, London, a daughter of John Armine Willis (1839–1916), a school inspector who later became Chief Inspector of Schools for the west of England, and of Janet Willis, who was a daughter of James Coutts Crawford. There were five children in the family, four daughters and a son, and Willis was the second girl. John Armine Willis had been educated at Cambridge, where he was an officer of the Cambridge University Rifle Volunteers, and he liked to take his children on climbing holidays in Switzerland. Willis later remembered that they had "suffered from a surfeit of beautiful things on an empty stomach".

Olive Willis was a rebellious child. In 1891, she was sent as a boarder to the new Wimbledon House in Brighton, which while she was there became Roedean School, and was there for four years. From 1898 to 1901, she was at Somerville College, Oxford, where she read History, gaining a third class in her Finals.

Although baptized in the Church of England, the Willises attended a Theistic church founded by the Rev. Charles Voysey in Swallow Street, near Piccadilly. At Roedean, Willis objected to the lack of religious teaching, was attracted to Anglo-Catholicism, and at the age of seventeen was confirmed at the High Anglican St Cuthbert's, Earls Court, remaining a lifelong Anglican.

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