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Foxcroft – A Royal History
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Middleburg Life File Photo
Charlotte Haxall Noland founded the Foxcroft School in 1914.
By Dulcy Hooper For Middleburg Life When Charlotte Haxall Noland founded Foxcroft in 1914 at the age of 32, her dream was that the school would become one “girls would want to come to and hate to leave because they loved it.” She served as headmistress for 47 years and, no doubt inspired by her iconic leadership, the school benefited from a serendipitous touch of royalty along the way. As a young girl, Wallis Warfield, the future Duchess of Windsor, first crossed paths with “Miss Charlotte” Noland at Oldfields in Cockeysville, MD, a school of 56 girls “so snobbish they did not even compete at games with other girls, preferring to play among themselves.” The school’s motto was “Gentleness and Courtesy.” At Oldfields, Wallis became a keen basketball player, coached by the talented young Charlotte Noland, who offered afternoon basketball sessions three times a week in a rented Baltimore garage. For the young Wallis, Noland was an ideal woman—“a mixture of gay, deft teasing and a drill sergeant’s sternness…cultivated of manner, a marvelous horsewoman and a dashing figure in every setting.” Wallis, like Noland, was a skilled horsewoman, unafraid to tackle jumps or challenge others with whom she was riding. Middleburg Life File Photo The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, shown with Madge Stokes Stone Larrabee (left), stopped at Foxcroft for a visit in 1941.
Burrland, Charlotte Noland’s family house, was a white-columned, Greek-revival plantation that became the setting for Burrland Camp, which Noland started in 1907. Wallis first attended camp in the summer of 1909, along with several other Oldfields girls. Wallis loved her summers at Burrland, where days were filled with riding, picnics, lawn tennis and croquet, poetry, blackberry-picking expeditions and time spent on good manners. Wallis always wanted to return, and in 1941, she did, this time as the Duchess of Windsor. It was dark when the Duke and Duchess arrived in Middleburg, and people lined the streets to see the royal couple. Noland met her former student and the Duke at the entrance to Brick House. The lawn was flooded with light. All the servants stood at one side to get a good view of the couple as they were ushered into the parlor. The royal couple was presented to the 90 students who filled the room, beginning with the seniors. The girls curtseyed when they were introduced, and the faculty members were then introduced one by one. After that, the couple was driven to Noland’s home at Covert for tea. Two members of the faculty, whom the Duchess had known in Baltimore as a girl, were among the guests. The visit lasted only an hour, as the Duke and Duchess were expected in Washington for a dinner. The event was covered by the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, which wrote, “all that day, people flocked here, as word got out that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor would go through Middleburg to spend the week-end at Foxcroft to call on Miss Charlotte Haxall Noland. When they arrived, the lawn was flooded in lights and all the colored servants stood at one side to get a peep of the visitors.” Fifteen years later, in 1957, Queen Elizabeth II visited the United States. Having heard about Noland from a cousin who had attended Foxcroft during World War II, the Queen expressed a desire to meet her, and to spend a day in the country seeing horses. For the visit, the Foxcroft girls were lined up in a specially reserved spot along the drive to the house. Dressed in their green and fawn-colored uniforms, the Foxcroft flag flying in the breeze, they cheered the charming young queen and her husband, Prince Philip.