Norman Feather, 16 November 1904 - 14 August 1978

Abstract

One of the two authors (W. C.) has written of the life and the other (S. D.) primarily of the scientific work and pedagogy of Norman Feather. It has not proved possible with such a subject to keep life and research completely a part and there is inevitably some degree of overlap in the two accounts. We must ask the reader’s indulgence, and hope that, as Feather himself expressed it in a similar situation (1976d), we have avoided ‘mere repetition’. 1. Study and research Norman Feather was born in the schoolhouse at Pecket Well in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 16 November 1904, the eldest son of Samson and Lucy Feather. Both parents came from large families, Samson was the ninth of the ten children of John and Martha Feather of Denholme, Bradford, Yorks, and Lucy was the second of twelve children of Godfrey and Rhoda Clayton of Cleckheaton, Yorks. Feather has written that ‘teaching was in my blood’; not only were his parents both primary school teachers, but a sister of Samson and one brother and three sisters of Lucy also taught in Yorkshire schools. Norman’s sister Phyllis and brother David, however, apparently did not continue the family tradition. Norman himself attended primary school at Holme on Spalding Moor, where his father was headmaster from 1907 to 1933, and where his mother returned to teaching between 1914 and 1933.