Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories thread

[MKM]

I thought the dark room was accessed from the cloisters (i.e. from outside, and round the back of, the science block). Perhaps it was moved. It was a wonderful facility to have, and great that we were allowed such freedom in using it on our own. Presumably it was only available to the more senior girls, though I don't remember any restriction.

[Katharine]

Kerren, the Flat in the Steward's House had three double rooms. As far as I remember there was also a bathroom and a very nice living room there must also have been somewhere where we made coffee but I don't recall a kitchen at all. It would not have been suitable for Domestic Science. As I said Aunt Helen talked about it and it may have been Miss Gamble's Flat.

[kerrensimmonds]

Possibly Katharine.. the timing would be right. Miss Gamble joined at the same time as DRW (1942) which may have heralded the end of the 'Domestic Science Flat'. I think my memory is faulty about the Illustrated London News article (which I have upstairs, all I would need to do would be to check!). It was 1953 and featured the Cookery School, not the flat. In fact, Betty Jukes tells the tale of the day the photographers came round. It was winter, and snowy or slushy. She was wearing boots. DRW bought the photographer in to the Cookery School, took one look at Betty's boots and decided that there was no way her Cookery teacher was being photographed in such inappropriate foot gear. So she kicked off her own court shoes and made Betty wear them for the whole of the session!
I remember using the Dark Room off the Needlework Room lobby, but it may well have been moved after my time Mary. And I don't recall any restrictions, either - nor do I remember any teaching on how to use it! Maybe we learned from each other. I remember the darkness, and a red light, and baths of developing solution and watching the pictures emerge, there must also have been some fixing solution before we hung the pictures up to dry. What a facility for those times!

[englishangel]

Mary is right for our time, it was certainly off the cloisters, along with some rooms with typewriters, and PItman books for those who wanted to teach themselves to type.

[midget]

The White House was the one opposite the school, but it was not only young staff who lived there. Miss Mitchell also lived there and made sure the younger ones behaved! one assistant PE teacher, whose name escapes me, came back from a night out at the same time as the milkman arrived, and was caught by Miss Mitchell. She was sacked as a bad example to the girls, who would have known nothing of the incident had she not been sacked. Logical?

[midget]

The use of the flat for people taking the Housecraft Certificate had to be suspended during rationing, as they had to cater for themselves, 2 at a time, doing their own shopping on a budget. There was also probably a safety worry in case of air raids.
Miss Gamble lived there all the time I was at Hertford, and as far as I can remember there was an entrance at the side of the science block.

[Jo]

This is so fascinating - I don't believe I ever knew that Miss Gamble had a flat behind the geography room. I do remember learning that she belonged to the Poor Clares - DR probably mentioned it during Miss Gamble's retirement presentation.

I always thought the dark room was off the needlework lobby, but as I never used it I couldn't be certain. Maybe it was the old dark room, which had by then been moved to where Mary remembers it.

From reading the various autobiographies, I thought the prefects' flat only came about because when Miss Davis arrived as Bursar, she didn't need all the accommodation that the previous Bursar (who had a wife and family) had had. I'm not sure when that was.

I have no recollection at all of staff accommodation in a White House opposite the school, so either I wasn't aware of it, or it had gone by the time I arrived. I remember the teaching staff accommodation mostly being in the listed buildings inside the front wall, apart from Chemi T and Merce, and Nutto von Stetten, who lived in the Music School. I think there might also have been some rooms up behind the staff dining room, as we had French and German Language Assistants when I was in the VIth form, and that's where they lived.

[englishangel]

I have really big blanks in my memory. I don't remember Miss Gamble at all, I suppose I never had occasion to go to DR's office so never came across her, nor do I remember her/a flat at the far end of the Geography room, can't remember becasue no need to. My daughter often accuses me of forgetting things tha she remembers, but I think I have one of those memories, that if something is not pertinent to me I forget it.

Top floor of the science block LHS I remember clearly because I needed to. All the science labs on the right hand side, Physics, Chem and Bio also had a Sixth form lab behind them.

[Katharine]

I have no recollection at all of staff accommodation in a White House opposite the school, so either I wasn't aware of it, or it had gone by the time I arrived. I remember the teaching staff accommodation mostly being in the listed buildings inside the front wall, apart from Chemi T and Merce, and Nutto von Stetten, who lived in the Music School. I think there might also have been some rooms up behind the staff dining room, as we had French and German Language Assistants when I was in the VIth form, and that's where they lived.

Jo you have reminded me, when Kerren and I started at the school, what became the Music School was the San - Midget may remember it in use. It certainly was never in use while I was there. This then became the Music School quite late in my time, and I think Chemi T was one of the first residents. The cells described yesterday for typing etc off the cloisters were music practice cells for most of my time. I don't think I knew they had changed function, I was no musician!

[Angela Woodford]

The Dark Room. I remember it being in a cupboard-like room leading out of the ante-Needlework Room. I visited it once with Mary Mc who was developing some photos. Enter lobby to Needlework Room, cream-painted door to Dark Room immediately on left. Breathe in strange chemical smells!

I had no idea about Miss Gamble's flat! I'm amazed that she was a Poor Clare! Out of interest, I googled the Poor Clares to learn that they formed concurrently with the Franciscan Rule, and live in small Communities -in poverty, joy and generosity. Miss Gamble... does it sound like? Would a generous joyful person have reproved Katharine for smiling too much?

The nearest I could find to a Poor Clare living out of Community is an account by one Jacques de Vitry in 1216, which speaks of "women who dwell in hospices in community life and support themselves by their own labour".

There's a Poor Clare Community in Barnet, Herts. I wonder if that's where Miss Gamble went in the holidays? (A Poor Clare should possess no property either as an individual or as a community.) However, the site for the Barnet Community has a picture of the most adorable little Sister sitting on a gigantic ride-on lawnmower with a Jack Russell on her lap!

That flat behind the Geography room must have been pretty bare... I don't remember Miss G ever appearing in Chapel either.

The last time I looked at the bundle of CH correspondence to my parents, I noticed the immaculate presentation of the letters written by Miss Gamble. Long before the introduction of open punctuation for business letters, they are absolutely perfect in style and presentation. But oh! what a miserable woman!

Typing! I think it was when I was in the LV1 - 1970 - that there was a room in Nines set up for us to teach ourselves to type. There were three big traditional typewriters and accompanying "Typing First Course" books. I remember looking up at the low wooden-beamed roof above in exasperation when my fingers wouldn't move as fast as I wanted.... Susan Parkin opposite me seemed to be getting the hang of it much more efficiently than I...

Suppose Miss Gamble had worked on a modern keyboard, with Mail Merge? I wonder if her cross face would have cracked into a smile?

[midget]

I have no recollection at all of staff accommodation in a White House opposite the school, so either I wasn't aware of it, or it had gone by the time I arrived. I remember the teaching staff accommodation mostly being in the listed buildings inside the front wall, apart from Chemi T and Merce, and Nutto von Stetten, who lived in the Music School. I think there might also have been some rooms up behind the staff dining room, as we had French and German Language Assistants when I was in the VIth form, and that's where they lived.

Jo you have reminded me, when Kerren and I started at the school, what became the Music School was the San - Midget may remember it in use. It certainly was never in use while I was there. This then became the Music School quite late in my time, and I think Chemi T was one of the first residents. The cells described yesterday for typing etc off the cloisters were music practice cells for most of my time. I don't think I knew they had changed function, I was no musician!

Midget remembers the San very well. It was used if there was an epidemic of eg mumps, so I was in there twice (yes I know normal people only have mumps once). It was always alleged that someone had died in there, and the "Death Room" nexy to the big ground floor ward was kept "exactly as it was when she died". Lies, all lies. She was removed to hospital, and died there, and the so-called Death Room was a lovely sunny room with 3 or 4 beds. It was great because the school employed 2 lovely Red Cross nurses for the San, and we hardly ever saw sister. The twin nurses were much loved because they let us get out of bed to go to the loo and didn't hold with all that lying flat nonsense.

[englishangel]

It's funny Angela remembering the dark room being off the needlework ante-room whereas Mary Mc and I remember it as being off the cloisters. (Katharine, I think the music rooms became typing rooms in about 68). I do have a vague recollection of there being a door on the left as you went in, but that was the stairs side so I am not sure how it fitted in.
Was there a similar room below in the cookery school and below that iin the Geogo room?

Midget, I was just talking to someone this morning and her 10 year old son had chicken-pox over Christmas and we were talking about the new vaccine and she said that the same child had mumps within a week of his MMR (already incubating it) but then 15 months later had it again on the other side.

[Katharine]

I think there may have been a store room in the front corner of the Geography room - the playground side but can't swear to it!

[midget]

It's funny Angela remembering the dark room being off the needlework ante-room whereas Mary Mc and I remember it as being off the cloisters. (Katharine, I think the music rooms became typing rooms in about 68). I do have a vague recollection of there being a door on the left as you went in, but that was the stairs side so I am not sure how it fitted in.
Was there a similar room below in the cookery school and below that iin the Geogo room?

Midget, I was just talking to someone this morning and her 10 year old son had chicken-pox over Christmas and we were talking about the new vaccine and she said that the same child had mumps within a week of his MMR (already incubating it) but then 15 months later had it again on the other side.

Poor kid! I hope his chickenpox virus clears off completely and doesn't come back to bite him when he's old. I had mumps only on one side the first time, and spectacularly on both sides for my second go.

[Angela Woodford]

I think there may have been a store room in the front corner of the Geography room - the playground side but can't swear to it!

Yes, there was. The left hand corner, playground side. In front of it was a display case containing some rather unexciting fossilly things, and on the side wall of the store cupboard, a rainforest poster.

Jasmin Ansar and I nursed our soggy-bottomed working model of an Archimedian Screw in the House fruit box across the playground, through the Science Block Doors, and with panicky acceleration into the Geography Room. We let it sag onto the glass top of the display case in sheer relief that we'd got it to Geography intact.

"An Archimedian Screw! An Archimedian Screw!! AN ARCHIMEDIAN SCREW!!!" exclaimed Miss Wilson, in characteristic style. Bravely, she seemed to ignore the fact that House garden soil and water had begun to leak onto the surface of the display case...

That's how I remember where that store cupboard was!