Welcome to the unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum - for discussing everything CH/Old Blue related. All pupils, parents, families, staff, Old Blues and anyone else related to CH are welcome to browse the boards, register and contribute.
Share your memories and stories from the Hertford Christ's Hospital School, which closed in 1985, when the two schools integrated to the Horsham site....
gma wrote: But Lordy, the Midsummer Revels!! Those awful blue dressing gowns all looming about in the square and on the field in the dark, I had completely forgotten! Thank you
But Gerrie! You were in 2s - only 6s have Midsummer Revels! It was sacrosanct. Other Houses had asked DR for permission to hold a similar ceremony but were told it was for 6s only. About the only time ever I agreed with DR.
Blue dressing gowns in the Square? What can this be?
"Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again.""
But Gerrie! You were in 2s - only 6s have Midsummer Revels! It was sacrosanct. Other Houses had asked DR for permission to hold a similar ceremony but were told it was for 6s only. About the only time ever I agreed with DR.
Blue dressing gowns in the Square? What can this be?
We used to creep out at night and fly across the square and hide up near the benches by the sportsfield watching; and we weren't the only ones scuttling around in the dead of night! The first time we saw it one of the older girls told us that you were all witches and that you were celebrating with your coven!
Gerrie M-A (GMA) - 2:34 71-75
"If you cannot have what you want, then learn to want what you have"
Anon or The Guru or someone worthy like that.
Wasn't DR.
Definitely not.
Yes, I remember when almost the entire school was laid low with food poisoning, & - (surely I'm misremembering this?)- those that WEREN'T laid low were punished for not having eaten their dinner!!
Oh Athene, what era are you? We were all laid low just before Easter 1971 just after the house singing competition. I was the first in 2's to go down with it. Hardly any 3's were ill and Lil maintained it was because she put bleach down the toilets every night. One of the houses was made into a make-shift infirmary because so many were ill. I think we even had to go into quarantine and go home for the holidays a couple of days late.
"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
Can't remember the food poisoning at all- but that maybe because I was confirmed then, and those being confirmed went home a few days early didn't they?
I don't remember the food poisoning but I do remember a flu epidemic, that I think would have been a couple of years earlier, unless my memory is playing tricks (quite likely!). The reason I think it was around 1968 is that I seem to remember it coincided with the cubies being built in upper dorms, during which time the seniors in each house in turn were housed in the infirmary. So they were already short of space before the epidemic started spreading. I think 1s was turned into a temporary infirmary as the housemistress there had some nursing experience.
Or I could just be mixing up several separate incidents and creating one that didn't really happen at all . Does anyone else remember this?
Welcome Athene Were you in 4s, late 40s to about 1952? I don't remember people being punished ( it was "high tea" in our case) but as everyone in 3s suffered it wouldn't have happened to us>
Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit a social science.
Jo wrote:I don't remember the food poisoning but I do remember a flu epidemic, that I think would have been a couple of years earlier, unless my memory is playing tricks (quite likely!). The reason I think it was around 1968 is that I seem to remember it coincided with the cubies being built in upper dorms, during which time the seniors in each house in turn were housed in the infirmary. So they were already short of space before the epidemic started spreading. I think 1s was turned into a temporary infirmary as the housemistress there had some nursing experience.
Or I could just be mixing up several separate incidents and creating one that didn't really happen at all . Does anyone else remember this?
Yes we had flu too at some time, but I didn't get it, in fact as far as I remember I have never had flu. Husband and offspring have all had it but I just don't succumb.
"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
I think Jo is right that there was a flu epidemic around 1968 and I thought more houses than 1s were either overflow infirmaries or convalescent homes. I've been trying to remember as my 17 year old son is at the school that was closed for swine flu and was all over the news. His AS orals were postponed and things got quite confusing for a week but I must say the school coped very well indeed and it and he are now back on track with no harm done as far as I can tell - but he is a deeply organised and together person: DR would have loved him, if he hadn't been a boy, if you see what I mean (except that he won't do things he doesn't think make sense, so maybe she wouldn't have....). Anyway, I wondered in the end if there were two flu epidemics between '64 and '71. As for Mary V's food poisoning, which would have been in my last year, I don't remember it at all - but that can't be because of Lil's enthusiasm for bleach as she left the previous term.....
I think the 1968 flu epidemic hit me too and that was when I was stuck upstairs up tin'f for 2 weeks. Yes it was very prison-like up there and I also remember throwing notes to friends as they passed.
It was nice in the annex though - definitely worth being ill, only you couldn't guarantee being put there. I remember having mumps in Long Ward (very demoralising for adolescent girls, but presumably worse for boys), also really bad colds with inhalations in big earthenware jars - you kept your head under the towel for the duration of two records.
I was advised to paint on Friar's Balsam when I had a problem with cracked nipples whilst breast feeding - can you imagine how it stung?! It didn't really do the trick either, and I had to give up - Maria recently found the entry in an old diary 'Stopped feeding Kirri' at 23 days, but she seemed to survive anyway! Anyway Friar's Balsam is one of those evocative smells, referred to on another thread, that still brings back memories of the school infirmary.
. Does anyone else remember this?
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