Pre-1900: Foundations

Irené Mabel Marsh was one of ten children born in 1875 to a home in Walton with its own trapeze and parallel bars. As a child, she regularly visited the local gymnasium and to Bootle Public Baths, quickly excelling at sport and offering to teach others to swim. This led her to study at Southport Physical Training College at 18, after which she took up part-time teaching in Gymnastics at Freshfield School.

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Marsh’s immediate success as a Swimming and Gymnastics teacher was so noticeable that she was invited to become Director of both the Bootle Gymnasium and of Women's Classes at the Liverpool YMCA, which had then the second largest gymnasium in the world. Under Irené Mabel Marsh, the YMCA offered additional evening classes for working girls and separately new classes for disabled students with a wide range of impairments and access needs.

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With growing demand for her classes, Marsh, with some resistance from her family, began to prepare in 1897 to establish her dream – her own Liverpool Gymnasium Training College. Her very first students, her sister Salome Marsh and friend Muriel Peet, enrolled in 1900, from which date the College’s history is officially commemorated.