Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories thread

[cj]

Cath, you have been away a long time. Frances has mentioned Kirri (and Maria) numerous times, babies, and house moves and Christmas and all sorts.

I've been trying to catch up a bit. Congratulations on the arrival of the babies!

[kerrensimmonds]

Welcome back, Cath.. though no doubt you have other priorities which are huge! Hope all is well with you and yours. ... especially with the new addition.

[Vonny]

Few of the staff came with us. Miss Morrison came as joint-ish head and Mrs Thing (Dawson?) from the Art School. Was that it?

That was it as far as I can remember. Miss Morrison was kind of deputy head - can't remember what her title was now! Second Mistress was it? Or am I imagining things?

I was the only girl in my Mediaeval History GCSE class. Andrew Husband did ask if I wanted to move to be with other females, but I never felt it was a problem, and the boys in my class were absolutely fine with me.

I also did Mediaeval History! It was the only A level class in which I WASN'T the only girl! There were five of us. But in English & Polecon I was the solitary girl.

If I could do my time again I would definitely choose Horsham over Hertford, but that said I feel kind of grateful to have experienced both schools.

And cj, what did we do at Hertford at the weekends in the evening? I don't think we were allowed to even set foot out of house were we?

[cj]

And cj, what did we do at Hertford at the weekends in the evening? I don't think we were allowed to even set foot out of house were we?

The burning question. B*gger all I think. But then I was only a lowly junior and we weren't allowed to breathe without written permission from the 6th form and the Housemistress. Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Sorry.

Monday nights were an anomaly as I was allowed somewhere on site with Jay Kirkwood to do Ballet classes. We had to lock the little side gate after our teacher went and would do a sort of "come and get us" twirl with our ballet shoe ribbons. Thursdays was Scottish Country Dancing after tea and was very popular but only because we'd rush out during the break to catch a glimpse of Top of the Pops in the TV room under the Dining Hall (no TV for juniors allowed in 1s). As for weekends, they were torturous in their listlessness. I remember queuing at the telephone in the Science block to make the one weekly call, languishing on the beds in dorm, gazing wistfully out of the window at the Real World and generally being BORED out of my skull. But then I was in 1s with the Tartar, Wizzo, in charge. We would have been 'on beds' by 7ish with lights out half an hour later. Don't get too excited but maybe a bit of the chart rundown was allowed on the radio on a Sunday. Just as well my parents weren't paying for this ...

[Fjgrogan]

Radio, TV, telephone, lying on beds during the day? None of these were allowed in 'our' day! What on earth did we do with our weekends - no idea! No ballet or country dancing either - although we did get to do country dancing when it was too wet for games on weekday afternoons, half the school at a time all crammed into the gym, with the cloakrooms smelling of plimsolls!

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Am I correct in recalling that we weren't allowed into the dorms during the day?

Saturdays: breakfast (only day of the week that we had the possibility of Shreddies), prep, lunch (hot snot?), walk outside school walls, but can't remember when we were granted this privilege. Tea. Bed?

Sunday: breakfast, chapel, letter writing, lunch, walk?, dinner, bed.

Do recall wearing school jumpers as leggings while listening to the radio in The Day Room. One particular evening that remains reasonably clear was waiting to hear the latest Beatle's release: Hey Jude.

Is that really how we spent our time?

[Fjgrogan]

I had forgotten all about letter-writing. We sat at the dayroom tables in silence, supervised by either wardmistress or one of the seniors, and wrote home. We were allowed to write to a short list of people other than our parents (was it six?), all to be named on a list agreed by our parents. Letters were handed in unsealed, ostensibly so that any notices could be added, but you could never be sure whether your letters would be read, so had to be careful what you wrote. Bear in mind that we did not have the option of telephoning home to give the real version of the fiction that we had written!!

[kerrensimmonds]

What about gravel crunching? Wasn't that at weekends - a Sunday????

[fra828]

Gravel crunching after Sunday morning chapel, but was this only in summer? Seem to remember we had Sunday walks in winter, in a trudging crocodile,varying routes around Hertford. I liked letter writing. I found it a sort of escapism to put pen to paper and often wrote several pages to my parents, about what, goodness knows ! Probably everyday mundane things such as what we'd had for lunch and snippets of information about school work. I never wrote about anything BAD, just incase letters WERE read, and also I wanted to block out negative thoughts. School life was gloomy enough without reinforcing this in writing....Actually, just as others have described, Hertford weekends were exactly the same in the 80's as they had been for decades! Saturday afternoons: sometimes we did gardening, played bridge(?), very occasionally go to the cinema over the road. Who else remembers going to the cinema there? I saw there: Funny Girl and The Go-Between. There was such a huge sense of freedom to be allowed through those school gates! There were a few rules relaxed when you got to 5th form, but Hertford was truly a prison-like existence!

[midget]

It all sounds idyllic! Definitely no going upstairs during the day, or into the dayroom during morning break. Any transgressions woild be happily reported by the cleaners. They seemed to loathe us. Jealousy??

Someone had a wind up gramophone and a couple of records (Lilac Domino, from a show called Lilac Time is the only one I remember, probably because it was played so often). On Sundays we were allowed to listen to Grand Hotel on Miss N's wireless.

[Kim2s70-77]

Sunday mornings were definitely for (censored) Letter writing (after Chapel, of course) and then Gravel Crunching. We did go on those awful crocodile walks, two-by-two, in our Harris tweed coats and house scarves, in the Winter (being gawped at by Hertford 'yobbos' {is that still a word??}). In Summer, we were allowed to sit on a blanket, wearing our Ashbourne hats, on the field - no running around/ tennis etc as it was the sabbath - but reading or making daisy chains etc was permissible. Is it my imagination, or were we allowed to play croquet on a Sunday?? Saturdays were filled with Prep in the morning and then things like tending to the pocket-handkerchief-sized garden or working on one's flower arrangement for the House competition etc. Mostly reading....................endlessly. Weekends always seemed long. It did take me YEARS after I left before I stopped dreading Sunday eves, though. Must have been the prospect of a hungover Chemi T with double chemistry first thing Monday morning. Deadly accurate with the wooden blackboard eraser!

[Fjgrogan]

I am amazed that nobody mentions school needlework, which took up a disproportionate amount of our spare time - surely we must have done some of that on a Sunday? I do remember one girl in Sixes who refused to do school needlework on a Sunday because she classified it as work and would not therefore do it on the 'sabbath' (her family were Plymouth Brethren); she would however sew 'useful bags to put things in'!

Kim,I love your thoughts on Chemi T's hangover and double Chemistry on Monday morning. I never knew Mary Thompson as a teacher; I met her much later in her life, when I used to visit her and Frances Mercer in Kerry. Mary was every bit as fond of her whiskey then, and I can well believe that she would have been deadly at aiming a blackboard eraser. She was somewhat less adept at steering a car! She ruled Mercer with a rod of iron, which made life difficult after Mary died.

[englishangel]

It all sounds idyllic! Definitely no going upstairs during the day, or into the dayroom during morning break. Any transgressions woild be happily reported by the cleaners. They seemed to loathe us. Jealousy??

Someone had a wind up gramophone and a couple of records (Lilac Domino, from a show called Lilac Time is the only one I remember, probably because it was played so often). On Sundays we were allowed to listen to Grand Hotel on Miss N's wireless.

Much the same in 1972 when I left. We did have a radio to listen to Pick of the Pops on Sunday evening.

Also when the country came to a halt on Sunday evenings for The Forsyte Saga in 1967 (no my memory is not that good, I had to look it up) it even affected CH Hertford and we were allowed to watch it. Did Brideshead Revisited have the same effect in the 80's I wonder?

[Jo]

Also when the country came to a halt on Sunday evenings for The Forsyte Saga in 1967 (no my memory is not that good, I had to look it up) it even affected CH Hertford and we were allowed to watch it. Did Brideshead Revisited have the same effect in the 80's I wonder?

Don't know about the 80s but Miss Tucker let the sixth form watch The Palissers (which I think ran to 26 episodes) in her sitting room every week. That would have been about 1974.

[icomefromalanddownunder]

I am amazed that nobody mentions school needlework, which took up a disproportionate amount of our spare time - surely we must have done some of that on a Sunday?

I have successfully erased most memories of school needlework, except, oh no, why am I ............................. hyperventilating? Oh, well, there was the time when I turned the hem on my apron the wrong way and didn't notice until I was standing before SWSNBN awaiting approval. And ....................................



Kim,I love your thoughts on Chemi T's hangover and double Chemistry on Monday morning. I never knew Mary Thompson as a teacher; I met her much later in her life, when I used to visit her and Frances Mercer in Kerry. Mary was every bit as fond of her whiskey then, and I can well believe that she would have been deadly at aiming a blackboard eraser.



She would also string a large rubber band between the handle and top of a lab tap and use it as a bow to shoot chalk arrows.
.