O level Results

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....

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MaryB
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Re: O level Results

Post by MaryB »

That's right. Brenda Griffith Williams came straight from Oxford in my last year to teach French- she was only a few years older than us, and would have liked to be friends had the conventions allowed it. I did get to know her a few years later when I started work in London - she had left CH and teaching, was working as a librarian, and lived round the corner form me in Crouch End. I also know that some years later she was a librarian in the Home Office but though I worked there for 20 years I don't think I ever used the library and we never ran across each other. Probably much of what I know about staff room politics and hierarchies comes from Brenda - she certainly found CH difficult.
Mary Bowden (Gaskell)
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Jo
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Re: O level Results

Post by Jo »

fra828 wrote:I took O levels in 1972, so was there around same time as you Jo. Miss Riddiford late for lessons- now I remember that thanks to your reminder! Do you remember Miss Griffith-Williams, a young quite shy French teacher, she must have started about 1970? She found it difficult to discipline our somewhat unruly class and we played her up like mad-poor lady! Don't think she was there more than a couple of years.
You must have been in the class that I started in then - I repeated my second year as I was a year too young, and starting to struggle a bit by then. So...8s..... you must have known (or been :) ) Kathy Collingwood, Susan Kirkup, Sharon Grant....??? I'm racking my brains but I can't think of anyone else.

I met Kathy C sometime in the early-mid 90s as her brother was rector of the main town church in Bedford where my father helped out after his retirement. She was working as a music therapist in mental health.
MaryB wrote:That's right. Brenda Griffith Williams came straight from Oxford in my last year to teach French- she was only a few years older than us, and would have liked to be friends had the conventions allowed it. I did get to know her a few years later when I started work in London - she had left CH and teaching, was working as a librarian, and lived round the corner form me in Crouch End. I also know that some years later she was a librarian in the Home Office but though I worked there for 20 years I don't think I ever used the library and we never ran across each other. Probably much of what I know about staff room politics and hierarchies comes from Brenda - she certainly found CH difficult.
Brenda..... well, I never knew that! We used to call her Blodwyn, but we thought her name was Barbara. I remember her - particularly that she didn't properly blend in her foundation and had a tidemark around her chin and neck. I think of her every time (increasingly rarely!) I put on the full works - must blend in properly, mustn't end up looking like Miss GW :lol:. I remember her as a nice woman, though with a rather monotonous voice. She was learning Russian and one time when half the form was off on an outing somewhere, she used our French lesson to teach us a bit of Russian, explaining how, when you translated the alphabet, the words were often similar, like restaurant. It was fun.

I never thought about staffroom politics at the time but I am sure that some of the junior staff had a worse time of it than we did, given the mafia at the top of the pecking order. Miss Gravett, a games mistress in the 70s, apparently now works somewhere with an Old Girl, and came along to an OB day with her a few years ago and regaled the assembled company with some staffroom tales. I wasn't there that day, but I wish I had been!
Jo
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Re: O level Results

Post by fra828 »

Yes Jo I was in the same year as the 3 you mentioned, tho I was in the B form with another girl who is still a very close friend. Mary, It was nice to have news of Miss G-W. I kind of liked her too, tho at the time, didn't admit it! So silly !
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