News from Old Girls
Joan Gurney (Appleton), 1938-'57
Liz White is correct: memories flood back from articles written in the CCHS Newsletter, and from her own searches through old School Magazines. Jo Edwards, in an earlier article, not only transported me back to my reasons for loving nasturtiums, and regretting the results of one of my art exams, but she is now teasing me with her memories of Miss Overy, Grey Friars, and the Preparatory Departments of CCHS - the latter always called Pre!
I entered the Pre in 1938, and thereafter progressed through the Lower School (both at Grey Friars) and the Upper School (at North Hill), leaving in 1951, after three years in the sixth form. My first encounter was with Miss Overy, closely followed by Miss Parberry, and Miss Cooke. Miss Overy, I remember, was the dominant one, and always at the centre of things. Even today I can pick out the influence that all three had on certain aspects of my life and later achievements.
Miss Overy taught me nature study (never called biology, in those days) and, together with Miss Parberry, and Miss Cooke, must have triggered my interest in art. Pages and pages in my nature notebook were filled with watercolours of wild flowers in spring, and seeds and fruits, in autumn (right & left). Gathering
the specimens and identifying them were important parts of the process, and Miss Overy's characteristic mark of A, in red ink, indicating that you had done well. I still have my small watercolour paintbox, with the last colours mixed inside the pallet lid. Birds, butterflies, and other
for pressing wild flowers. I still have large drawing books full of the surviving specimens. Her enthusiasm was infectious. My parents were farmers, and I was a country girl, so every table top, chest, and other surfaces in the farmhouse were covered with heavy books and blotting paper, as the plants beneath had their juices squeezed out, until they were eventually dry. It was a process which taughte me about time, and patience.
This early experience of flower pressing have me a considerable advantage in my later university days, when, as part of a year's project in botanical studies, students were asked to prepare, mount, and name 200 pressed flowers (right). It took me the whole of one year! It gave me great delight to learn that mine was the best collection in the whole department, but, in the same breath, to
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insects were painted from observation. Frog spawn was kept in a tank, and all stages of development, from egg, to small adult, were recorded. Metamorphosis was added to my vocabulary. Birds were watched, listened to, and painted (left), and, where possible, wild animals which visited the garden, had the same treatment. My lifelong love, not only for art, but also for wildlife, developed from here.
Even more exciting, for me, was Miss Overy's passion
sadly learn that one of my theory exam papers had a very low mark, and I would have to retake it. Pride, once again, had come before a fall!
There seemed to be no end to the activities which Miss Overy introduced to the Pre. She supervised the keeping of silkworms, in cardboard boxes. It is no wonder that the basket of her old-fashioned bicycle was not only crammed with exercise books, but also wild flowers, seeds, fruits, and sprigs of black mulberry leaves, which she had gathered from neighbours' gardens, and on which the silkworms fed. The black mulberry tree in the garden of Grey Friars had fallen, before my time.
Trying to spin the silk from the cocoons of the silkworms was a hopeless task, because the thread kept breaking. I did not discover until years later that the silk thread is only strong if the silkworms have been fed on white mulberry leaves, which contain sericin, and toughens the thread. White mulberry trees are rare, and none were in the vicinity of Grey Friars, and so Miss Overy had no choice.
In addition to this vast coverage of the natural world, Miss Overy also presented lessons in handwriting, reading, spelling, punctuation, and literature. I handwrite everything, today, and shun all other mechanical means of doing so. I always remember "I before E, except after C", but sometimes forget the exceptions to this rule. Punctuation was always a game, to me, and I still scatter commas all over my writings, and the exclamation mark is a favourite.
Miss Overy created in me a great love of Beatrix Potter and her animated wildlife. Even today, animals which appear on my lawn, at night, are recorded as Mr Todd (fox) and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle (hedgehog). I could not tolerate Lewis Carroll and "Alice in Wonderland", always asking myself how a child my age could possibly get down a rabbit hole. I believed in fairies, and so Margaret Tarrent and her "Flower Fairies" (right) were copied profusely in my art work, because I could not draw them from life, as they did not exist.
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There seemed to be very little that Miss Overy could not teach, but lessons in the Pre called needlework seemed to fall to Miss Cooke, seen here, middle back row (left), when she was my class teacher, in Upper ll. I can name all the pupils, without reference to a list! Needlework lessons included knitting (at which I was a comic turn), sewing, and embroidery. I gave up sewing completely, after leaving the Pre, and going into the Lower School, where each of us was
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given the task of making a pair of knickers, in the school summer dress material. Mine turned out to be the shape of a pair of baggy jodhpurs, and ended up as a floorcloth! Many others had the same fate. Embroidery, however, had a better outcome, and inspired me, in later life, to produce abstract, and applique pictures (right).
I think it was Miss Cooke who took needlework and drama to another level, by helping us to make our own glove puppets, and later, a cardboard box stage and
give a live performance, My glove puppet (left) was modelled on one of the farm cats, and if it is not the original one, which I have hoarded since that day, it has certainly been through the same experiences - three generations of children, worn fur fabric, and the loss of one boot button eye! The combination of puppet-making, and extensive wildlife lessons, inspired me, later, to make an articulated teaching aid, in the form of a frog (right), for use in the early stages of my teaching career.
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Miss Parberry was a very gentle person, and it was she who welcomed me to the Pre, when I first arrived at the door. She appeared to help on everything,
particularly physical activities, which were called games, and gym, but never PE. The highlight of these activities was sports day, on the Grey Friars tennis lawn, which, for the younger, lower part of the school, involved traditional races such as egg and spoon, sack races, and balancing an object on your head, whilst running for the finishing line. I was always asked to top up the supply of hessian sacks, from my farming parents' stores, each year, to make sure there were no holes in the corner, so that a plimsolled toe or two could not project, and give an unfair advantage to the runner! The teachers' race was always a good spectacle, and we all longed for the day when we were old enough to participate in the arch-and-tunnel team race. This involved a complex sequence of ball-throwing, rope under jumping feet, and ball passed overhead. One small slip in the sequence would result in a tangled mass of arms, legs, balls and ropes, writhing on the ground! There were no health and safety regulations, in those days!
As I moved up the school, high jump was my speciality. This was performed over an old-fashioned rope, balanced between two wooden posts, with markings in inches, and no sandpit landing. The scissor leg technique was the only one used, at this time, although I was aware of the western roll, which was just appearing in major competitive circles. I tried it once, at home, and had a soft landing in a heap of farmyard manure! I never won a place in high jump, at CCHS, but as a reminder of this event, I have one jumping post converted to a bird table, on my lawn (left), which clearly shows the graduated holes for the metal device which supported the rope, as it was raised higher, and higher.
By the time I reached the high jump, and team race stage of my sports development, I had graduated from the Pre (which had been dissolved) and had entered the Lower part of CCHS - but still at Grey Friars. The 11+ exam (then called the scholarship examination) was behind me, and it was the early 19402, with the disruptions of WW2 to our studies. Miss Cooke and Miss Parberry had
vanished from my memory, but Miss Overy was very definitely in the foreground, having upgraded her subjects from kindergarten activities to biology, and English literature.
Long live the legacy of the CCHS Preparatory Department, the Lower School, and its teachers. Their influence on me is felt almost every day.