OGs’ Memories

Parents’ Day at St Swithun’s, 1949

Kindly written by Beryl Cooke neé Rowland (Venta 1950)

I started in the new ‘Transition’ department in the summer term of 1943. I was seven on May 2nd and, as I remember it, there were only 5 of us in the form. Miss Mack was our form mistress, newly employed I think, to teach very young children. Miss Hobson was very much around too; in fact may have taken us before Miss Mack came. We had a form room on ground floor of Chilcomb looking out onto the garden with a slope just made for rolling down! Susan Jennings was a classmate and Judy Watson joined too. Miss Mack was lovely and so was Mrs Wilson, who joined the staff in those wartime days, to help teach the ‘little ones’. She was one of only two mistresses who were titled ‘Mrs’ although she may have been widowed too. She was gentle too but then she didn’t have to try and teach maths to people like me!

We were soon given a form room upstairs which seemed like the attic! Claire Hensley joined us after that and she became my best friend. Unfortunately, she was whisked off to board at Cheltenham Ladies’ College a while later and that was the end of that. The same thing happened to my best friend, Sarah Burrowes, whose father was Archdeacon of Winchester, and who lived in a lovely house in the Cathedral Close. When Sarah came to tea with us (at Christ Church Vicarage) she thought it odd to see my mother washing the kitchen floor herself! I do remember once being invited to an evening party at Sarah’s, which was to celebrate her somewhat older brother, Simon’s birthday.

Every day, we had to walk along the road, lined with sycamore trees, to the Senior House for lunch, then back again. It was fun when the wings fell and we would stick them on our noses! In the grounds of that house (near the top of St Giles’ Hill), there was a ‘building’ where we could play indoor games. Once we even rehearsed and put on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I was Monsieur Mustard Seed!

Sometimes we had our school dinner across the road in Palm Hall, which we was called ‘Waiting House’. The girls who boarded there were waiting to be placed in one of the established boarding houses: Earlsdown, Hillcroft, High House and Hyde. Le Roy was the junior boarding house and that was based in a house next door to Chilcomb. I was a day girl, as we lived in Winchester.

In those early days, my parents had arranged for me to get to school each day in Miss Hobson’s old Austen 7 and she used to pick

me up outside the prison, which was very close to our house. I had to stand in the back till she dropped somebody off at the station so it was a squash! Bridget Jackson was another passenger, as she and her widowed mother lived next door to ‘Hobbie’. I wonder now if, perhaps like my father, ‘Hobbie’ had extra petrol coupons. Other people, like my grandfather, had to ‘lay-up’ their cars for the duration of rationing.

When the Americans vacated the school after using it as a hospital, we all moved lock, stock and barrel back up there. I’m sure that was a huge relief for the teachers. I felt very grown up then, but actually was still only a junior. As my name began with an R, I was put in Venta. It bothered me that Caer Gwent was mispronounced and I knew this, because I am Welsh! The boarders in Hillcroft and Earlsdown walked back and forth to their houses each day for lunch, while the day girls and boarders from High House and Hyde were catered for at school.

We played netball in winter and rounders in summer until we were beyond Upper Three, when we started to learn lacrosse, tennis and cricket. Miss Snowball was the games mistress when I started at St Swithun’s and she had been Captain, I was told, of the England women’s cricket team, so we were quite proud of her. Even my father, who had been a very good cricketer in his younger days, was impressed! He used to play for the fathers’ team against the girls in the annual cricket match as a cunning slow bowler. The girls had to be out twice, to make it fair!

The war ended when I was nine and then uniform rules became strict again. I do remember feeling very grown-up in my brown tweed skirt with two kick pleats back and front. My parents were part of a scheme in Winchester in which a large party of Dutch children were brought over to stay with host families for two months. This was to give them better nourishment and a happier time after the trauma of the war years in their country. We shared our home with Trussje (pronounced Troosha) Baaker and she was permitted to come to school with me. She was a year or two older than me and learnt English very quickly, of course!

Outside Hyde Abbey, 1967

Kindly written by Rosemary Ormerod neé Comley (Hyde Abbey 1969)

The outdoor swimming pool was freezing as it was up on the top of the hill where the wind came straight through the holes in the fence. There was a lean-to with hooks in the roof to hang our wet towels and costumes on. They never dried properly so the first hurdle was going into the wooden changing cubicle - redolent of creosote - and trying to wriggle into a damp cozzie. Taught in small groups, the rest of us stood shivering on the side of the pool waiting our turn, eventually trying to dry ourselves with damp towels and then getting dressed when we were still damp all over.

So of course we tried everything to get out of swimming! The ‘wrong time of the month’ seemed to come fortnightly, coughs and sneezes were endemic and one friend even tried painting a verruca on her foot… but it didn’t fool Miss Roberts. I wish I could remember all the dormitory names in LeRoy - Bannockburn, Calcutta, Blenheim, Rorke’s Drift, Lucknow - I know there were others!

What else? The locked sweet cupboard and Miss Taylor ringing the bell when we were allowed to line up and get some from our tins. Puppy baskets and chamber pots under the beds. Going to ‘the palace’ (the toilet) before lights out! Egg bread and eiderdowns. Listening to Radio Caroline under the bedclothes – we had a radio smuggled inside a book with pages carved into a radio shaped hole! Pinching and eating the raw rhubarb growing below the bottom lawn. Lining up outside to wait for the school bus from Chilcombe to take us to Medecroft and exchanging insults with our mortal enemies, until somebody crossed their fingers and said, “Pax!” At the end of my first term it was time for ‘HP’. We newbies were told that we would be collected by coach, driven to London - in our nightwear - to see the horses of parliament. Yes, I believed it. It turned out that HP meant doing the ‘Hokey Pokey’ on the landing outside Calcutta/Blenheim, although it is really called the Hokey Cokey!

I think Le Roy made more of an impression on me than Hyde Abbey. I was just nine years old, 3000 miles away from home in Africa. My first letter to my grandmother she kept, and I have it still. It asks her to send me a soft toilet roll because Le Roy only had hard paper and I was getting spots. We had boxes of Jeyes interleaved toilet paper in ceramic holders and I had developed a rash!

Back to school after the war, 1945

Kindly written by Jeanne Yates (Venta 1949)

I started at St Swithun’s in the autumn term of 1939 when I was eight years and two months. Form two was on the first floor just to the left at the top of the stairs and our form mistress was Miss Joan Hobson. There were about 25 in the class and I was assigned a desk at the back. In those days there were inkpots with blue ink in them and we used pens with detachable nibs. Biros were invented much later. Quite often, blotting paper would be wedged into the inkpot, making an awful mess and using the pen impossible. We had rough books so that we could write in pencil during the lesson.

Miss Finlay was the headmistress and was a very formidable person with her black choker around her neck. She often took prayers in the hall where we would sit on the floor with crossed legs. I could not do it then or now, aged 90!

After the declaration of war on Germany on September 3rd, preparations had been made and air raid shelters had appeared near the trees at the back of the main buildings. We had to practise going out to them if the air raid alarm went. I had been given a wristwatch for my 8th birthday and can remember asking the member of staff in the shelter if she wanted to know the time. “No,” was the answer, “we have to wait until the all clear.” There was an air raid shelter smell distinct from any other smell and it was the same when we had to move out of the school buildings into two houses on St Giles’ Hill. We were told that the buildings had been requisitioned and would be turned into a hospital, which eventually did happen.

We learnt to play netball and we used the hall for gymnastics. Even as a new child I longed to climb the ropes and sign my name on the ceiling but that did not happen until we came back to school after the war.

During my first term, Miss Hobson had brought in some bulrushes and placed them in a big vase which was on top of a cupboard. She told us later that when the top brown bits were ripe we could have some seeds. I think she was starting to tell us about the birds and the bees! I do not remember who suggested putting a thumbnail into the bulrushes but I was chosen to do the deed and nobody confessed! She also took us on a nature walk on the hill next to the head’s house and we drew pictures of the plants we saw. Many years later after an AGM she told me that she had been out the night before so she would know the names of the plants and where they were. None of us had guessed that had happened.

We were given gas masks and had to take them into school each day. They were in cardboard boxes with a long string attached and awkward to carry with a satchel.

Miss Hobson taught us sewing and we had to make a bag to keep our sewing things in. The first thing we had to do was embroider our names on them. I think it was a good way of learning who we all were and I have still got my bag.

Spring term in 1940 was very different as there were two houses for teaching and we sometimes had to go to the other house for a specific lesson. We were allowed five minutes to get from one house to the other. The juniors like me were in the smaller one and we had an upright piano in our form room. This was used for prayers in the morning when we sang a hymn. I played When I survey the wondrous cross in E flat on Good Friday. I did not study music at school but I did quite well. My sister Sheila tells me that a duster was put inside a piano where she was on April Fools’ day and many sniggers followed.

Sheila and I took our lunch to school and were allocated a ground floor classroom to eat in. There was no central heating but we sat by an open coal fire in the winter looking at a large painting of a Saint with nothing on lying on a cloud and with a pointed finger looking as if he was waiting to land. I wish I could remember the title – anyhow it was another lesson in the birds and the bees! When Miss Finlay retired, I was chosen to present her with her leaving present from the juniors and I remember my senior getting my hair tidy and telling me what to do. She had very thick hair and a long central plait. I did the presentation to Miss Finlay and her gift was an electric iron. Think of what she might have had now!

The war years went on and our routines were well established. We trekked up to fields to play lacrosse, tennis and cricket but we were only allowed to play on the side next to the by-pass. We heard one day that a Spitfire had dared to fly under the bridge and we hoped it would happen again when we were there. It did not.

We were allowed to go and swim in the outside pool in unheated water and that meant walking past the school buildings and the injured American soldiers dressed in their red ties, white shirts and blue suits. Of course there were wolf whistles for the senior girls. The temperature in the pool had to be 60⁰F (15.6⁰C) for three days and it was VERY cold. I learnt to dive there off the top board and the spring board but injured my lower back. We also did lifesaving and I got a bronze medal. I can still remember the sounds of the doors to the cubicles banging as we shut them. Towards the end of the war I was chosen to go and see the American admin people in the main building and we went back to the hill with chewing gum, popcorn and dried bananas – an unheard of luxury – even though sometimes things ‘fell off the back of a lorry’.

When at last in May 1945 the war in Europe ended, girls living in or near Winchester were asked to help with the moving back of the library. This involved making a human chain to pass heavy books (which were tied in heaps) down the stairs into a Pickfords lorry. Then when there were enough books in the lorry we sat on the heaps and were driven up to school where we made a similar chain to get the books up to the first floor. That was a really good day’s work. I remember going to the City Kitchen to have lunch. It was heavily subsidised and we paid the equivalent of 5p (sixpence in old money).

It was wonderful to go back to the proper school buildings but things were different and I was growing into a senior and had another four years of education. Alas! I preferred PT and games and I got my name on the ceiling in the main hall but I learnt how to learn and that stood me in good stead throughout my professional life as a nurse. The first five years in school through difficult times were really good and improvisation was the key. I could go on further with events that were after 1945 but that is another story… ■