NEWS FROM OLD GIRLS
Daphne Jones (Drabble 1958-1965?)
Memories
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I noticed that the photo in the last Newsletter was the one from "Colchester Gazette" with our form in 1961 in the new school swimming pool, and the names of the girls written at the top by me (right). I was then Daphne Drabble. I am sad to report that the girl next to me, Christine Mather, died on 25th April 2021. She joined the CCHS a year or two after the Lower IV from Cleethorpes Grammar School when her father got a new job as manager of a Colchester furniture shop. My mother got friendly with her mother as they were both members of Shrub End Townswomen's Guild and its drama group. At school Christine (Chris) was bright and always achieved good exam results.
She was also known for her rather quirky sense of humour. She studied Mathematics at Royal Holloway and later became a Computer Programmer at Draka Kabel in Amsterdam and learnt to speak Dutch fluently. I lost touch with her, but sometimes received news of her through our two mothers. Like me Chris was an only child. I think her husband followed the same career path as she did. They had no children and I think that was their choice. Sadly he died in his fifties and I believe Chris returned to live in Britain around that time. Chris lived in Banbury, although she visited her parents who were still in Colchester. I had left Colchester in the early 1970s and my mother retired in 1974 and came to live near us.
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​In 2008 Brenda Green arranged a get-together of our year group from CCHS and over forty Old Girls attended. I returned to Colchester for the first time since 1974 and spent a few days in the town and looked around. We also had an evening dinner out with several Old Girls including Chris. I think soon afterwards she was included amongst my friends on Facebook, so I did keep in touch with her then. When she was in her late sixties she married Mikey Walters - maybe at Lexden Church? Tragically just a few months later he was involved in a car crash and died from his injuries. Chris's parents lived until their nineties and one hoped she would live as long, but she was 74 when she died. Stella Christie (Browne) was another girl in our year at CCHS and I believe she will know more about Chris. I don't know if she is a member of the OGA.
To return to Liz’s article and sports at CCHS, I will add a few more memories. I started at CCHS in September 1958 when the building in Norman Way had only been open for a year (left). The school playing field was across the road opposite the school for a year or two before the playing field at the side of the school opened.
The first playing field then went to the Technical School who travelled to it via a bus. At that time Norman Way had no other buildings apart from the CCHS. Very few teachers drove cars and those few who did parked in the small car park just in front of the main entrance (see picture above). There was an enormous cycling shed just beyond the caretaker's house and few girls travelled to school in parents' cars - most walked or cycled. Several buses brought pupils from further afield and they parked just before the school where Norman Way was a bit wider. There was rough ground in the first stretch by Norman Way and no houses were built there at the time. Beyond the school there were agricultural fields.
I agree about hockey – hanging around on the field and getting cold. Some girls must have liked it and played well enough to form school teams. After a year one could choose between hockey and netball, so I chose netball even though I was not good enough to be picked for a school team. However, later I played netball with Barclays Bank, Colchester. We met every week in the playground of Hamilton Road Primary School (formerly my Infants’ school). Some weeks we just made two teams and played each other, but we also played other teams. Cullingfords, the printers and stationery shop in High Street, had a team which we played regularly. We also played the Gilberd Technical School team. That school was then in the building in North Hill that CCHS used until the new school in Norman Way was built. We couldn't play Marks and Spencer’s team. They had many young women staff to choose their players from, and were far too good for us! I don't suppose the staff of many places these days plays netball in the evenings.
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In my first two years at CCHS we did cross country running once a week. We had a set route. We went off Norman Way on the footpath to Bluebottle Grove (right) and then made our way through the path between the Boys’ Grammar School playing field and the Education Office, on to Park Road and back to school. The eight school houses each had two teams (Lower and Upper School) of ten per team, and competed each year. It was hard to persuade so many girls to form the teams! I enjoyed it
though. In the first year (L IV) I ran the race in time to gain a point for the house. In my second year (U IV) I was pleased to come 17th (out of 80) and earn 3 points for the house. If I could have tried again in a third year and still in Lower School maybe I could have done better, but I never got the chance. The girls voted to abandon cross country running, so it was never done again whilst I was at CCHS.
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I did enjoy the gym, especially climbing the ropes, which I could do at speed. The new gym was one of the things which tempted me to choose CCHS.
The swimming pool I loved. I had learnt to swim in my last couple of years at primary school (Years 5 and 6 now). My mother was a non-swimmer and was determined that I should learn. She enrolled me into Colchester Swimming Club, where I joined a class at the Boys’ Grammar School. The pool was old, built soon after WW1, and was very gloomy and cold in the evenings. Lessons began with "duck your heads right under the water" - scary. However I did stick
at the classes. I also went to the large open air swimming pool (lido style - above left) on the river by the by-pass. I walked there with a friend from my class at junior school every Saturday in summer - via Balkerne Hill. Primary school age children would not be allowed to go on their own nowadays, but in the 1950s it was not unusual.
At CCHS I swam in a backstroke race for our house - not that I was very good at backstroke, but the others in Plantagenet House were worse. (Yes, I was in Plantagenet House, too). I always went in the pool when there was a chance, whatever the temperature, sometimes very cold. The showers were embarrassing to use. Why did one have to strip naked to go in the shower instead of just rinsing off in a costume and then change more discreetly in the changing room? I don't think anyone was used to showers in those days. We only had baths at home, and that meant taking one's clothes off. We always missed the showers out at school if we could get away with it. We always hoped that having a school swimming pool meant extra swims in summer evenings after school and also at the weekends and school holidays, but of course that was not allowed. We could not swim without a lifeguard somewhere on the premises.
As an adult our children learnt to swim earlier and better than we could, so my husband and I went to adults improvers swimming classes. Our children's swimming progress depended on length of swims rather than style or stroke. All three of our children swam well (and still do) and our grandchildren have learnt to swim better. The national swimming courses insist on swimming all strokes well. They can all swim butterfly stroke (which we can't) as well as freestyle, breast and back strokes. I continued to swim regularly and more recently did water aerobics, both shallow and deep water. It is only my stroke (I don't mean a swimming stroke!), broken ankle and broken leg which have stopped me. However, I won't go on about that, so I'll stop there.
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