Feature: The Generation Game

We often say that the Reed’s Foundation changes not only the lives of the child it supports, but also their immediate and future families. These two short articles from ORs proves that our theory is spot on!

The Generation Game

VERBENA ANNE MERCER / SIMON MOSELEY

Lady Anne Moseley, with an “e” as she always introduced herself, was enormously grateful to Reed’s School and what it did for her and her family.

She was born Verbena Anne Mercer in Slough in 1921. Her family owned a successful grain business and were well off but, by the late twenties, the money had gone and her father, an accomplished oarsman, had advanced cancer. He was being treated at St Thomas’ Hospital, Lambeth, with a new cure that involved excruciating pain by wearing a helmet of Cobalt pins. Sadly, he died in 1932 leaving Anne and her mother all but destitute and the latter went into service to make ends meet.

Fortunately St Thomas’ were very supportive after her father’s death and had a relationship with The London Orphan School. Anne was sent to Watford and then to Dogmersfield during the War where she flourished and made lifelong friends.

Lady Anne Molesey Simon Molesey

She became a successful primary school teacher and married George, a civil servant who would go on to the top of his profession and be knighted by Her Majesty. When it was time for Anne’s son to go to secondary school, she had no hesitation in considering Reed’s for him, by then located at Cobham and only 15 miles away from the family home in Hampton.

It was a long journey for Anne from very humble beginnings but one that Reed’s featured largely in and she was always grateful for the friends she made and her association with the school.

As for that son, Simon, his time at Reed’s was more successful on the sports field than in the classroom, though his role as Susannah in the Marriage of Figaro was a highlight! He served in the British Army in the Inniskilling Dragoons for 18 years in some weird and wonderful places and then spent 22 years building infrastructure for Goldman Sachs through Europe and Asia Pacific.

Yes, the Moseley family have a lot to thank Reed’s for!

Cliff Andrews, Marion Venus, Robert Andrews, Joan Andrews (née Venus)

CLIFF & JOAN ANDREWS / MURIEL ANDREWS / MARION VENUS / ROBERT ANDREWS

When I joined Reed’s in September 1969, I believe it was as the first pupil of two Old Reedonians. However, as well as my father and mother being ORs, so too were two of my aunts.

My father Cliff Andrews was born in August 1921. His father had died in July 1929, and Cliff joined the London Orphan School (LOS) in Watford in February 1930. Here he stayed until the end of July 1937. His sister Muriel, born in December 1923, joined him at the LOS in September 1932 after first being sent to Spurgeon’s School in Stockwell. The boys’ and girls’ schools were separate, with brothers and sisters only being allowed to see each other on Sunday afternoons.

My mother, Joan Venus, was born in April 1926 and her sister, Marion, was born three years later; they lost their father in October 1934. Mother joined Rosebud House (the same one as Muriel Andrews) as soon as January 1935, and Marion joined her as a ‘little bud’ in 1937. All four had lost a father who had died in his 30s. On my father’s side, their mother had been left with four children under twelve. His older two siblings were already at their ‘senior’ schools and I believe his mother saw sending her younger two children away to school as preferable to them being farmed out to relatives on a permanent basis. On my mother’s side, their mother was secretary to a company director in London, and maybe it was he who suggested the LOS through his City connections.

After the War, the boys’ school moved to Cobham, and Reed’s School formally adopted its new name at an AGM in March 1946. Despite many being unhappy at the loss of the Watford name so quickly, it was also agreed that past pupils be known as Old Reedonians, and it was at an Old Reedonians’ dance at the Russell Hotel in London on 25th November 1950 that my father first met my mother. They married in April 1952 on my mother’s birthday. I was born in April 1958.

My aunt, Muriel Andrews, became a nurse at Epsom County Hospital. An Old Watfordians’ Association newssheet records her as being on its staff in 1944, saying sorry that she had lost touch and was looking forward to a reunion after the War. However, this was not to be, as one of her patients was Ray Anderson of the Royal Canadian Engineers who was being nursed for a shrapnel injury. They married as the War ended and she emigrated to Canada the following year where they settled in Edmonton Alberta and had six children. Ray died in 1991 and Muriel passed away in April 2018.

My other aunt (my Mother’s sister), Marion, trained as a primary teacher after the war, and remained single. In later years she moved to Devon, and is presently in a care home in Exmouth, where in August 2021 she turned 92.

My parents lived in Epsom, then Eastbourne, and finally outside of Salisbury. Mother passed away in 2005 and father the following year. I currently live near Bristol, having retired from music teaching, and have two teenage daughters.

I am proud to have come from a long line of Old Reedonians!