The Register

Weddings

Keara Masrani (Class of 2008) to Alex Gurran in Mayfield School Chapel on 27th May 2019.

Isabel Rae (Class of 2010) married Joseph Brickle at St Albans Church, Frant, on 8th July 2019. Her sister, Jemima Rae (class of 2015) was her maid of honour, and Rebecca Fraser, Flora Barker and Amy Batty (all class of 2010) were her bridesmaids. Amelia Street (Class of 2007) to Wade Pasfield at St. Matthias Church, Richmond Upon Thames on 21st September 2019. OC's present; Mercedes Llewellyn (Maid of Honour), Katie O'Toole (née Thorne), Goziem Ikwueke, Sarah O'mahony-Zed, Lucy Camden, Hannah Richards, Georgia Taylor, Rebecca Walters, Poppy Busuttil, Daisy Campbell-Salmon, (all Class of 2007), and Daisy Greenlees (Class of 2006).

We would also like to announce that Amelia and Wade had a lovely baby boy on 18th June 2020 - Arlo Henry Pasfield, born at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

Sarah Ruthven (Class of 2005), married Thomas Scott on 25th July 2020 at St Margaret the Queen Church in Buxted. Sarah’s sister Isabel Ruthven (Class of 2008) was also present.

We were due to get married on 27th June 2020 but obviously Covid put pay to our original plans. As soon as the total ban on weddings was lifted we managed to have our wedding ceremony, with just our parents and siblings present.

We were married on 25th July 2020 at St Margaret the Queen Church in Buxted, and are planning to have a larger wedding celebration with our wider family and friends in due course - not least because I wasn't able to wear my planned wedding dress due to Covid delays!

Message from our Lay Chaplain, Mr Ronan Lavery

I would like to remind you all that the first Mass of each School term is offered for deceased OCs. A prayer is prepared that includes all of the names to be mentioned, and these are also recorded in a Remembrance Book. Please do contact oldcornelians@mayfieldgirls.org if you would like us to pray for any deceased OCs. Thank you.

In Memoriam

VERONICA BAILEY (CLASS OF 1964)

“Come on, we’ve nearly done it !” That was Vrons, trying to open a bottle of Babycham on the iron bedstead in the San, with myself and Rosaleen (Haran) obviously in the last, and we assumed terminal, stages of the flu. Though we had no idea where the bottle came from, we were determined to share it before we were caught.

Vrons was no goody-goody, but she did go on to become an exemplary Mayfield girl: a Badge (which is what we called Prefects), a Marion (Child of Mary), and a Sodalist (distinguished member of the Sodality of Our Lady) - all of which I yearned to be too, but being far too naughty, I had to put up with hockey and tennis prizes. However, all her magnificent achievements paled into insignificance beside one unique and invaluable talent which gave her a head start in life : she was, from the beginning, a magnificent best friend.

In those far-off days, we used to send each other messages on holy pictures, which we kept in our missals, and furtively read in Church, just to pass the time. On all of them, she was everybody’s best friend.

She and I spent many summers in Ireland, at our little house by the sea. I remember a broken toe she was still complaining about early this year; I remember collecting cockles, and even a slight case of food poisoning due to my sister Biddy’s (Brigid HorganKehoe) amateur cooking. And in return, her family looked after me during many happy visits to their house in Epsom. Latterly she stayed with us in Provence, and we travelled together to India and Thailand, still weakened by the same severe cases of the giggles we had cheerfully suffered at school.

When we left Mayfield, we had some mad moments together: I remember us selling ice-creams from a barrow in Hyde Park, for instance. I lived only a short time in the UK, while for Vrons, a short but exciting stint as a BOAC trolley-dolly introduced her to many new countries, though she had already travelled extensively with her family as her Dad was in the RAF. She married Bart, her one and only love, and hid the wedding ring from BOAC for a while, so that they could get enough air-miles for a late honeymoon. And then she began to follow her real vocation, her nursing career. All her life she spent caring for people.

I moved to Canada shortly after all that began, and we stayed in touch, as she did with many of our class. She was an earth-mother, or soul-sister to so many of us. Whenever we would find ourselves in trouble, wondering what to do, the answer was simple: call Vrons. And what did she offer? Whether it was a solution, a suggestion or just a virtual hug, she made it better. She spent so much time looking after others, and she was a major force in organising the class reunions we had over the last 20 or 30 years, making sure that we all kept in touch, keeping up our spirits.

She had an extraordinary way of bonding with everyone she met. She was so at ease in herself that people relaxed with her, and they never forgot her, even after only one meeting. This gift she obviously used as a nurse, where the help, love and care she gave to the sick, and the dying, was immeasurable. She moved easily between adults and children with short or long-term illnesses, and towards the end of her career, she worked in children’s hospices, where she must have been a shining light to her young patients and to their families.

She nursed her husband Bart for several years with patience, love and humour, through a particularly cruel form of dementia. His death was a terrible personal loss, from which she never entirely recovered. But she turned to her four gorgeous, beloved sons, and their wives and children, and became the best and most generous Granny, Gaga and Gary in the world to her eleven grandchildren who will remember, and miss, her fun and her wisdom.

I found another of those holy pictures addressed to me recently: on it, she declared that we would never be parted. But alas, Vrons was to leave us, all her best friends, far too early, just before her 74th birthday, and the world is a duller, colder and poorer place without her. However we, who knew her for so long - and many of her other friends - will keep her in our hearts, and will treasure the abiding memory of a staunch, loyal, loving, beautiful, vivacious and totally irreplaceable confidante and friend, who will never, really, leave us.

Sarah Browne (née Horgan)

VERONICA BY SUE GAISFORD (CLASS OF 1964)

She was a woman driven by compassion. He was exhausted, staggering, burdened and blood-blinded. And through the jeering, prurient crowd she shoved, Scooped up her scarf, to clean his face, Just trying to help him see.

She dared to go where all the rest hung back. She could not save his life, but she could make His stumbling steps a little safer, And in that daring move, she set her mark on history, Her very name the product of her act. She was, she owned and she became A true icon, For on her scarf his portrait was emblazoned, Damaged and desolate: God – and suffering man.

Did they know, her parents? Did they imagine that she would become, The perfect, live embodiment of that name? Compassion was her very essence, too. She went where none of us would dare to go, Into the howling wilderness of grief.

She, too, was helpless to prevent untimely death. And yet she stood, brave and unflinching, Offering her own strength to ease their suffering. She bore the agony of helpless parents, And somehow, somehow made it bearable.

That first Veronica, they say, might be a fiction, A pretty myth with no substantial base.’ Women have no sure foothold, after all, In scholars’ minds. Perhaps, she was. I think not.

But our Veronica was very real, As all those families whose hands she’d held, Whose children she had loved, whose sanity she saved Know very well. For day after day, night after night, she nourished them. I saw it when, straight after such a night, She nursed my dying sister, Brought her own peace and competence, her courage and her kindliness And saw us through. Somehow, she saw us through.

And she was fun. And joy. And laughter, too. And friendship such as never is imagined, nor deserved.

The virus snatched her, and she died alone. None of her lovely boys to hold her hand, No little grandchild with a final hug. No blessing from her brother, no last rites. To me, three kisses on a final text.

God rest her soul

CLAIRE CALVER NEÉ FULBROOK (CLASS OF 1977)

Claire sadly passed away in November 2020, surrounded by family, at St Michael's Hospice in St Leonards, after a short battle with cancer aged 62.

Claire was born in Nairobi and spent her early life there with her parents and her brother Guy. She started at St. Leonards in 1967 and was initially very homesick (and shocked that the English seaside was not quite the same as Mombasa!) However, she soon found friends who remained with her for life, and moved on to Mayfield, eventually leaving before the final year of Sixth Form.

She continued her studies at Chichester College, where she took a Farm Secretarial Course and developed a life-long love of both pigs and donkeys. After a short spell at the RSPCA, Claire moved to London, where she worked in the City. For a year Claire joined fellow classmate Mickey Muntzer (neé Snellgrove) at Arup Associates. This was very much the heyday of the 80s and a lot of carousing and fun was had. To this day, Mickey is still Claire's dearest friend and godmother to her daughter.

Claire met her husband, David, a paediatric ophthalmologist, in 1991 and they were married by the end of that year. They set up home together in Kennington and in 1992 Claire left N M Rothschild to look after family and their spotless home. In 1994 Claire gave birth to their daughter Rosie, who went on to follow in Claire's footsteps, starting at Mayfield in 2006, with the family moving to East Sussex.

Along with her superb memory for detail (especially regarding her time at school!) Claire had a keen interest in art, ballet and music (particularly Roger Daltrey!).

Claire was a kind, generous friend to all who knew her, remembered for her lovely laugh and happy demeanour, as well as a loving wife to her husband and a devoted mother to her daughter. She will be wholly and deeply missed.

David Calver

SISTER EVA HEYMANN (SISTER MARY CUTHMAN)

Some of you who were at the School in the 60s may remember Sister Eva Heymann, a remarkable woman who came over with the Kindertransport from Germany just before the outbreak of the war. Sister Eva died peacefully on 12 February 2021. May she rest in peace.

JANCIS HOUSTON NÉE BURN (CLASS OF 1947)

Thank you so much for giving David and me such an enjoyable morning at Mayfield last month, while we were staying at Burwash. We were very impressed by not only the old but also the new buildings and lovely grounds. I am also writing to give you some details of my older sister Jancis Houston (Burn) who died December 27th 2014. She came to Mayfield aged nine in 1939 and was there until she left in 1947 having done well academically - she remembered hearing the doodlebugs (flying bombs) going over during the war!

After leaving school she worked in London for a publisher before joining the Foreign Office, where she stayed and posted to Germany and Finland before she married David Houston in 1959 and travelled with him to many postings overseas, supporting his successful army career until they returned to Scotland with their two sons, where they took an active part in their local community and made my family and friends very welcome when we visited them, mainly during the summer holidays.

Lucinda Gilbert

JULIET DALY NÉE ARNING (CLASS OF 1949)

Juliet was born in Manchester in 1932. Her first SHCJ school was Harrogate, then early in the war she was sent to St Leonard's, where her aunt, Mother Ursula Blake, was Headmistress (which put Juliet at a disadvantage in disciplinary terms as Mother Ursula was anxious to avoid any hint of favouritism). Fearing Luftwaffe attack, St Leonard's was evacuated to what was mistakenly thought of as the safer Torquay, where soon afterwards a fierce air-raid resulted in a direct hit on the neighbouring military hospital, prompting a hasty move to Buckinghamshire and the luxury of Hedsor Park, with its marble baths and stately commodes.

Peace saw a return to St Leonard's but subsequently Juliet was despatched by Mother Ursula to spend a year in Brussels (where post-war austerity was in fact more severe than in Britain), at La VIerge Fidele. There she acquired fluent French and improved her piano playing but, finding the evenings dragged as most pupils were day girls, frequently climbed out of her groundfloor window to visit them.

After returning to St Leonard's, she realised that good French alone was unlikely to gain her entry to Oxbridge, so in 1949 moved to cram at Lady Margaret Hall in Cambridge, followed by a year in London working as a publisher's reader, before she was admitted to Newnham to read English in 1951.

After graduation and various jobs in Europe, she moved to Sicily and married Sergio Siragusa; the marriage ended in divorce and subsequent annulment, but produced Francesca. Fortuitously, Juliet re-met a former boyfriend from Cambridge days, Michael Daly (Downside '45-'49), recently widowed with a very small daughter; they married in 1971 and Juliet, now the much-loved step-mother of Emma, joined Michael on his Foreign Office postings to Brazil, Ireland, the Cote d'Ivoire, Costa Rica and Bolivia. Debarred by FCO rules at the time from taking any remunerated employment she joined the diplomatic spouses' traditional round of receptions, dinners and charitable work, learned Spanish and Portuguese, enhanced her skill as a water-colourist and, as ambassadress in Michael's last three posts, entertained (a not unalloyed pleasure) most members of the Royal Family except the Queen.

On retirement to Kew in 1991, she was active in the local parish until Alzheimer's took its toll and she died in her sleep on 24th March. With lockdown restrictions there has yet to be a proper requiem mass, but at her cremation ceremony one of the readers was Old Cornelian Elizabeth Byrne-Hill (née Mackenzie).

Michael Daly

PAULINE HARTIGAN NÉE MORROGH (CLASS OF 1941)

I am writing to tell you of the recent death of my mother, Pauline Hartigan on August 19th, at her home in Stone, Aylesbury. It was a blessing that two of her seven children could be with her as she died, and two others arrived within minutes of her passing. I wonder how many of her generation at Mayfield are still with us?

As Pauline Morrogh, Mum attended Mayfield the late 30's, leaving I believe in 1941 or early 42 to marry my father, John Cargin, a doctor in Woking. As luck would have it, one of her sons, David, married Jackie, the daughter of her old school chum from Mayfield, Myra Poole (now Monica Hoghton, living in Perth, Scotland)!

At Mayfield, she enjoyed the hockey more than the academic side, apparently, but the really lasting impression came through the selfless example of the nuns of the Holy Child Order; I am sure that this was instrumental in her finding so much support down the years in her friendship with religious sisters, especially the Servites in Begbroke, and the Ursulines in Brecon. For 20 fast-moving years, Mum lived in Brecon, where she threw herself into the role of grandmother in the L’Arche community. She certainly gave a lot, but like many others, she too discovered that community life brought her a great deal as well, at the level of the heart, through her friendship with members with learning disabilities. Mum was glad that L’Arche also brought her into occasional contact with Therese Vanier, another Mayfield old girl and a prime mover in the founding of L’Arche in the UK.

In 2010, Mum moved to Aylesbury, to be near her second daughter Francis. For the last four years of her life, she was bed-bound and had vascular dementia, but her indomitable spirit and energy continued to shine through, making a deep impression not least on her visiting grandchildren, and her brilliant carers. She loved to banter, chatting about the parties, trips and holidays she was forever planning, interspersed with requests for a little top-up of whisky. You could often see something click, especially on the faces of the young women who looked after her: it was the inspiration, that ‘if ever I get to 96, I want to be like Pauline!’ Into her coffin, along with her rosary, we placed a bottle of Bell’s whisky (diluted, just in case!).

Jim Cargin

TRIBUTE FOR MUM, PAULINE HARTIGAN, AFTER HER REQUIEM MASS, FRIDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER 2020

Over the past few years, in anticipation of this moment, I have sometimes wondered what I might say in tribute to Mum. Who could have imagined her funeral taking place under these strange conditions, with just family members here in the church, and a livestream to others who cannot be here in person, including my brother David, and Jackie and Monica in Perth, Rosie and Char in Kinsale and many others, friends and family? But wherever you are, we are together in this moment of grief and remembrance. To quote mum, ‘No words of mine could ever be enough to thank you.’ Mum, Pauline, has impacted on all our lives, and today we come together to remember her. First thing to say is that this is just a personal tribute from me, her youngest son. Nearly all of you all knew mum, and your own stories would be great to hear. I would be very surprised if each of you didn’t mention her immense energy, sense of fun, sheer zest for life and her tireless capacity to turn up on your doorstep, dogs in tow, having driven the length and breadth of the country. She once told me, that one of her favourite lines from the Gospel, was where Jesus says, ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions.’ It is not hard to see why that appealed! Not surprisingly, this could be exhausting for anyone trying to keep up with her: I remember Johnny saying to her more than once, “Mum, just try to stay in one place for a while.” Fat chance!

And it is exactly that driving dynamism that makes me think there is a question mark missing from the words on the lid of her coffin here today. It should read: ‘Pauline Hartigan’ – at rest?’

On the other hand, many of you will recall her talent for falling asleep at dinner parties – her own included; but that was only to wake up after five minutes, bursting with energy again, and ready for the next round, just when everyone else was beginning to flag. And if you do remember that, you will be remembering too, her amazing gift for entertaining and generous hospitality. A hospitality that invited others not just into her home, but into her heart. Mum was very much a person of the heart. Incredibly strong-willed. Several people, in offering condolences, have used the word, ‘indomitable.’ Indomitable, yes, but also incredibly vulnerable. I think it was this combination, and her underlying faith in God, that helped her to engage so deeply with many people, and not just in her own generation, but becoming true friends with people who were much younger. Mum went by the shortest route: directly heart to heart.

Her own life-experience taught her that life can sometimes be tough. Perhaps that was what helped her to give space to others going through their own tough times. I never ceased to be astonished at how quickly she could get on the wavelength of young people in L’Arche, many decades younger than herself. She was both grandmother and chum, listening and engaging. Of course, every now and then, there would be the famous line: “Doaty, could I ever ask you to pour us another little drink?” Doaty, this, doaty that. It’s from her Irish roots. To Mum, ever a wild Irish rose, whoever we were, family, friend or most recently carer, we were all “doaty”.

This photo portrait was taken when Mum was 90, by a professional photographer, Paul Wilkinson, who entered it for a national competition, where it won! The beauty of age!

I just want to speak briefly about the last few years of her life, when she was confined to bed and needed to be looked after by her brilliant carers. I will say that again: her brilliant carers. The very phrase, “confined to bed” implies a slowing down surely? Not a bit of it! It was sheer joy to witness her immediate impact on new carers. They came to our house, expecting to look after a sweet little 96-year-old lady. What they met was Mum, firing on all cylinders, yelling at them at the top of her voice, threatening to murder me, and all while winking, planning her next party and as ever, delighting in the shock she was causing to anyone in earshot. A fighter with a heart.

And that’s because Mum was an independent spirit, and that always stayed with her. It will surprise no-one who knew her, that even as recently as June, she suddenly announced, ‘I don’t feel ready for heaven – I think I will do my own thing.’ I replied, “Mum, chances are you’ll be going straight down without touching the sides.” And immediately her bedroom was filled with that wonderful peel of laughter. She loved to banter. It was always so good to hear her giddy laugh. In fact, Mum was ready to go. I think perhaps she had a sort of premonition that her time was not long. One afternoon, when I was cooking in the kitchen, I heard this clarion voice singing at high volume upstairs: “For she’s a jolly good fellow!” I went up and we sang loud and long together. A swan song, although I didn’t realise it at the time. And then a few weeks before she died, when I was sitting in her room, one evening, she simply said, apropos nothing at all. “I want to thank you for all you have done.” And it wasn’t just me. It was all of us.

We will soon be burying Mum’s body in the cemetery in Stone. But we won’t be burying Mum. She has already moved on to one of the many mansions, she was looking forward to. In fact, if past form is anything to go by, she has probably already zoomed off to her second or third.

Heaven’s gain is our loss. But as we grieve her today, we have to remember: there is simply no way that something as puny as death could ever extinguish a spirit like Mum’s. If heaven really is a wedding feast, she will be even more in her element, and more glamorously dressed than ever. As ever, the life and soul of that party too, discovering to her delight, all the other lives and souls that have created with her so much joy, laughter and fun, hope and compassion in this world.

The only ones I feel sorry for are any souls up there, who have, up till now, been blissfully enjoying their doubtless well-earned rest, and imagining that would continue forever… well, have I got news for you…

Jim Cargin

DIANA PHILLIPS NÉE HAWKINS (CLASS OF 1950)

Diana was born at the end of December 1932 and from the age of two she and her parents lived in India, moving nine times in 11 years as part of army life. On returning to England after the war she was sent to St Leonards, where her mother Alison (née Cole), and her sister Marye Paul were schooled. After gaining her school certificate she studied French for a year at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. She worked for the War Office in London, taking an opportunity to work in the Middle East where she met Hywel Phillips, an army officer. They married in London in 1956. They had three children, Anthony, Veronica and David. Veronica followed her mother and grandmother to St Leonard’s Mayfield. Diana kept in touch with many of her contemporaries from school.

Family tree:My grandmother’s first cousin Margaret Hope spent a short time at St Leonard’s. She was about five years younger than my grandmother I think. There are a number of photographs taken inside and outside during the time my grandmother and great aunt spent at school, and certainly some of the nuns also taught my mother.

My mother kept in touch with Maureen Briggs (née Gormley), Clare Synge (née Weld), Elizabeth Donovan (née Heron) to name a few. In fact I have just come across an article my mother wrote for the Cornelian Summer 2015 about her time at St Leonard’s if you have that copy in your archive.

Veronica O’Brien

MARY REMNANT (CLASS OF 1952)

Mary Teresa Elizabeth Remnant (1935 – 2020) was a world-renowned scholar and enthusiast of early music and early musical instruments, writing several books and numerous articles on the subject. She was the daughter of a music teacher and architect/art historian, and uniquely managed to combine these two fields of artistic interests, becoming an enthusiast and ambassador for Early Music, at a time when this was not such a popular field of study or interest as it is now.

Educated at the Holy Child Convent at St Leonards in East Sussex, she left in 1952 to study piano and violin at the Royal College of Music in London. While studying at the Royal College of Music, she was awarded the Tagore Gold Medal. She went on to specialise in Early Music, following her first degree with a DPhil in Bowed Instruments at St Anne’s College, Oxford. Receiving a Churchill Travel Fellowship, she was able to further study early musical instruments as they were portrayed in carvings and on the walls of Churches. She pursued this interest, becoming an authority on early music and giving many lecture recitals in London. She played on reconstructed instruments, many of them made to order by Alan Crumpler, and would demonstrate the sound of an instrument by playing a tune. She would illustrate a point in the talk with pictures of the instrument in a carving, painting, or engraving.

She was a founder member of the Confraternity of St James, founded on 13th January 1983 at her house, at a gathering of six friends to celebrate her birthday. Mary’s interest in the Confraternity was to become total and she was a committee member for many years. Initially committee meetings took place at her house in Chelsea. It did not take much time for Mary to set up a CSJ choir which went on to meet regularly and sang together for the better part of 30 years. Many lasting friendships were made through the choir and much fun was had by the pilgrim singers who enjoyed singing, not only in the Purcell Room, but also in places such as the Paris Metro, the ruins of Merton Abbey (to be found in an underground carpark), Canterbury Cathedral, 11 Downing Street and many other places beside.

Mary was a member of many academic societies and contributed much to the Early Music Society. She was a member of The Society of Antiquaries and was an active member of The Catholic Writers Guild. Mary was also a woman of great faith and a few years ago, in recognition of her lifelong work for the Church, she was made a Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great. Finally, no recollection of Mary would be complete without recalling her love of cats. She had several over the years and the most memorable pair must be Ferdinand and Isabella… She made a unique contribution to British cultural life and to the Church in the UK. She will be sorely missed by her pilgrim friends in the UK and on the continent, and early music enthusiasts all over the world.

I first met Mary when I moved from Junior to Senior school at St Leonards in the late 1940s. We shared a love of music and cats. I had the good fortune to attend some of her Festival Hall concerts over the years, and we used to meet at parties at the house of a mutual friend. The last time I saw Mary was at a friend’s wedding in Wimbledon in 2013. She was her usual enthusiastic self and we enjoyed a good gossip about St Leonards and some of the nuns we had known. Mary died in the middle of the first lockdown on the Isle of Wight where she was living. Unfortunately, her funeral could only be attended by a few close relatives.

Catalina Vassallo-Bonner (Class of 1956)

ANN RIETCHEL (CLASS OF 1952)

Ann was born on 14th December 1934 to Jerome and Maureen (Mary Josephine) Rietchel at Old Tiles, Mark Cross, Sussex. Ann said recently, September 2019, “I never yearned to have my own children. As I was growing up there was always a baby at home”. Jane joined her when she was three in 1937. Elizabeth when she was seven in 1942. Paul when she was 12 in 1947. Felicity when she was 14 in 1949. Brigid when she was 17 in 1952.

Ann was often involved with our care when we were very little and later taking us to the cinema, theatre etc. Just after Paul was born in 1947, our Mother contracted polio. The family was in quarantine so Ann helped run the home. She thought she may have had Rheumatic Fever as a child which may have led to her heart conditions. At one time a cardiologist said to her “with your heart you shouldn’t be alive”!

Ann had many memories of war time when she was aged five to ten. These are some, which she wrote down last year, May 2019. “My First Communion on 3rd May 1942; earlier than planned because Daddy was going abroad with the army to El Alamein in North Africa. He later went to Kohima in Burma. He was away for three and a half years; not home until October 1945.” She had previously remembered him walking up the garden path after his return from Dunkirk in 1940. Her love of London probably started as a young child with many trips to a London optician during the war (“when it was safe to do so”). She remembers “barrage balloons and the windows of the buses covered with mesh, except for a small opening so you could see where you were”! Only last year, September 2019, she said, “I couldn’t honestly say I was frightened all through the war but we all knew we didn’t want Hitler”.

Ann’s main school days were at The Convent of the Holy Child Jesus in Mayfield, Sussex, 1941 - 1952. At first as a day girl, then as a boarder, because she enjoyed all the after-school activities. Ann was the youngest in her class and too young to take her Matriculation exams with all her contemporaries. However, she did sit the exams and was marked by the school with a distinction.

Jane makes the comment that “Ann liked adventure as long as it was safe”! Although at one time, she did try gliding, and at the age of 17 in October 1952, she flew from Heathrow (which only had a departure hut) to Toronto (with two refuelling stops – Prestwick in Scotland and Newfoundland) to stay with our Father’s friends. Then she took the threeday train journey across Canada, to stay with our relatives in Vancouver for six months.

After her return from Canada, she started her nurse’s training at The Middlesex Hospital in London on 31st August 1953. She later trained as a midwife working at Dulwich Hospital, then the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells. All Ann’s working life was with the NHS; mostly as a medical secretary; - Radiotherapy Follow Up Department at University College Hospital, Camden Rehabilitation Centre, and later in Children’s Services.

Ann and Chris first met in 1964 at a Lourdes reunion. He invited her to a performance of Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion at the Albert Hall. It became one of her favourite pieces of music and Chris remained a lifelong friend. Ann would talk about her childhood family holidays with excitement. Later as an adult she had many holidays with friends and family which she would recall with great enthusiasm. These began when package holidays were in their infancy and the Mediterranean unspoilt. She was a lovely travelling companion and enjoyed everything from start to finish.

Ann loved books and encouraged her sisters and brother to read. She enjoyed enormously the cultural life of London; classical music, history of art, theatre and playing bridge. Not forgetting the not-so-sophisticated card game of racing demon, played at Christmas! Also, she had a talent for painting and drawing which was little known. She enjoyed going for local walks, but not in fields of cows! Point to Points in Spring. An interest in gardening from an early age continued through her life. Long family after-Sunday-lunch conversations around the dining room table, and afterwards with our Mother whilst sharing the washing up.

Ann was calm, gracious, patient, kind and always interested in the people around her, and in life in general. Once, a meal was paid for Ann and friends by a man on a neighbouring table as their conversation was so engaging!

Her faith was an important part of her life and she introduced the family to Lourdes. She loved working in the Baths, which allowed people to see her very gentle nature.

One of Ann’s earliest memories was the need to carry her gas mask to school during the war. She went into Croydon University Hospital on 27th March 2020 for an emergency hernia operation, when the Country was in lockdown with hospital staff wearing masks due to Covid-19. These protective masks are like brackets around her life. Between them the backdrop to her life was exceptionally peaceful in our part of the world. She very sadly caught the virus and died on 20th April 2020.

Ann, you are remembered well and we love you. May you rest in peace.

Felicity Bryant (Class of 1967) Jane Adolph (Class of 1955) Brigid Rietchel (Class of 1970) 15th August 2020

JANE ROSALYND HERON EVANS (CLASS OF 1952) 9TH MARCH 1935 – 4TH FEBRUARY 2021

Jane was born in Essex but was not yet five when she was sent to board with the nuns at the Convent of the Holy Child at St Leonards near Hastings, where her own mother had been at school. Relatively safe from the dangers of aerial bombardment, the school offered a haven for her and her older sister Elizabeth. Their mother Mary Cox (1903-2004), the only daughter of Austen Cox and Elizabeth (neé Singleton) came from a Lancashire Catholic family and many of the nuns who had taught her were still teaching at the school which meant that neither girls appeared to suffer from anything other than the slightest homesickness. Music teaching at the school was enhanced by the presence of Mother Aloysius who had been to Leipzig to study with a pupil of Theodor Leschitiskzy, who had learnt from Carl Czerny so a link can be traced directly to Beethoven. Jane always credited her skill at the piano from the early lessons she received at school and the fact that practicing was part of their daily routine.

When the Sussex coastline itself became a target, the junior section of the Convent was evacuated to Torquay and then Hedsor Park in Berkshire for the remainder of the War. Jane credited the origins of the religious order being from America, thanks to Dame Cornelia Connelly, with the relative freedom of her school life and talked often of the happy times they enjoyed in all three places. The first of her many certificates for passing piano exams with distinction was for Grade III in July 1946 when she was 11.

In March 1950 Jane and some of her musical friends were entered for the Hastings Music Festival competition and the following year they won the highest award for Chamber Music, with Jane playing Chopin’s Piano Concerto with Mary Remnant, later to become a distinguished musicologist herself on the violin. This was commemorated by the presentation of the D.Tonnell Silver Challenge cup, now sadly lost. In 1952 Jane was appointed Head Girl of the school for her last year and gained a place at Kings’ College to read history. After graduating she worked at St Richard’s, a small boarding school near Malvern, and then moved to London to work at Macmillan publishers.

Jane married architect Martin P.W. Evans in 1959 and had four children, making their home in Ladbroke Grove, West London and it was while they were at school that she studied at the Froebel Institute in Roehampton, where she gained her Diploma in Education (Music) in 1982. Lodgers in the family home around this time included Jacqueline DuPre and Sarah Connolly, and a tradition of hospitality began that lasted through two house moves. Martin’s encouragement concerts and country dancing parties in the garden in the summer were regular features of their family life. In the 1980’s an extraordinary organisation, which sadly no longer exists, called the Kensington Committee for Friendship for Overseas Students recognised that many young people came to Imperial College and other great centres of leaning for years from all over the world but never stepped over the threshold of anyone local’s homes. Visitors to the Ladbroke Grove basement would be encouraged to lose their shyness in persuading Malaysian PhD scientists to learn an Eightsome Reel. Jane taught the piano to adult beginners and during term time to children coming straight from school.

Jane Heron standing back row, second from left, with Mother Germaine, 1949

In 1990 Jane was invited to become a Trustee of the Dalcroze Society, a position she held for 25 years, and she occasionally gave papers on her teaching practice at their AGM. In 1992 she joined the Executive Committee for the English Folk Dance and Song Society, actively engaged in their campaign to retain Cecil Sharp House as their London HQ. In 1998 she gave talks to the European Piano Teachers Association, London and Leeds and some of her articles were published in the Music Teacher magazine.

The arrival of grandchildren in 1997, eventually to become eight in number, and her enthusiasm to spend summer months near her boat on the River Blackwater in Essex meant that she gradually decreased the quantity of pupils who came to her house, but she continued to put on concerts and ensured a wide and appreciative audience for events at home for pianists, in particular Julia Cload for whom she organised more ambitious events, one memorable one at St John’s Smith Square in 1997. Ever ready to translate her enthusiasm into practice, she chose charities to raise money for through these events which included SleepingOntheStreets, donning her own sleeping bag for a night on the South bank, and the St Nicholas Charity Centre, Moscow, associated with St Francis of Assisi RC church in Pottery Lane, W11 where her funeral on 9th March was held.

In recent years Jane provided piano music for the organists at both HMP Wormwood Scrubs and HMP Wandsworth and in 2018 through to last year pre-Covid, 2020, she gave weekly piano recitals before Covid restrictions prevented it at Thomas Dalby Court in North Kensington. Wisely choosing themes from Broadway musicals and a mix of popular classics, these gave great pleasure to the elderly residents of this sheltered housing scheme.

Photos survive in our family albums of happy reunions at St Leonard’s and Mayfield: if anyone would like further details please don’t hesitate to get in touch:

magdalenevans@gmail.com

Sister Patricia Milner was a fondlyremembered teacher and SHCJ Sister who was at St Leonard's until its closure in 1976. She died peacefully on 6th June 2020 in the SHCJ care home in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. She was one of the faithful pioneers of the Focolare in Ireland.

Anna Carboni (Class of 1981), remembers her:

It only really dawned on me in the last decade that it was Sister Patricia (or ‘S.P.’ as she was known at St Leonard’s) who set me on my path to a career in the law. I found out her address in Dublin from Claire Ball at Mayfield and wrote her a letter out of the blue a few years ago, reminding her of some of the things she taught me and the rest of ‘Junior 4P’ (‘P for Patricia’), a class of inquisitive 10 year old girls. It was my first year at boarding school, after a couple of years at our local village school. I learnt all my country capitals and rivers of the world from her (not that I remember them all); I made a lapis lazuli bracelet to represent some part of history that again I now forget; and I took part in a mock trial about whether one of the girls had mistreated her pet rabbit!

S.P. and another nun, Sister Carolyn Mitchell, used to take us down to the beach by Hastings Pier to have a swim in the sea on sunny July afternoons towards the end of the summer term. She encouraged us to plant flowers in some special flowerbeds that were arranged for us, and let us make camps in the school grounds, where once we led S.P. to put her foot into a rabbit hole, at which we fell about hooting with laughter while she got very cross with us. Luckily she forgave us!

I went on to Mayfield when St Leonards closed in 1976, with the class that would have moved in any event, and had another enjoyable three years there, but decided to join my brothers at King’s Canterbury for my sixth form, probably with no better reason than to be closer to the boys! It now feels rather disloyal to the SHCJ which had given me six fantastically fulfilling years of boarding school. S.P. remains the most important teacher that I had at any school, and I always thought it was a shame that she didn’t come on to Mayfield with many of the other nuns. I guess her calling was elsewhere.

I am sorry that I never managed to catch up properly with S.P. in later life, but I hope that she was pleased that she had been remembered by one of her charges from the 1970s.

SISTER MARY HILARY DALY

Sister Mary Hilary Daly died peacefully in Dublin on 21st December 2020. She was Housemistress of St Raphael’s House and a Maths teacher at Mayfield from 1978 to 1983. Before she came to Mayfield, she was Headmistress of what was then Combe Bank Holy Child School. On leaving Mayfield she became Headmistress of Killiney Holy Child School, Dublin, from 1983 to 1996. Old Cornelians from all three Holy Child Schools remember her with fondness and respect. Sister Mary Hilary also served as a Governor at Mayfield. May she rest in peace.