NEWS FROM OLD GIRLS
Joan Gurney (Appleton 1938-51)
WHAT JOAN DID NEXT - Part 3
The 1960s were some of the most exciting and enjoyable years of my life, and as the decade neared its end, I looked back on the numerous changes which had taken place since my childhood and schooldays at CCHS. My haircut had evolved from the tied-back-with-a-bow style dictated by the school regulations that nothing should hang below the collar, to the ‘frizz’ influence of the post-war home perm and the ‘bee-hive’ of the late 1950s, before finally settling into a version of the Mary Quant bob with a fringe, which I have retained ever since. The long flowing curtain style was just beginning.
Post-war economies saw girls’ dresses and skirts made from recycled fabrics. These, in turn, gave way to the delicate pastel shades and patterns of Horrocks cotton dresses in the 1950s. I still have several. Then came the brilliant colours of the 1960s - but the red, white and blue check of the CCHS summer wear went on and on! Television also established itself in the 1950s, but still only in black and white. By the 1960s it was beginning to replace the radio as a form of evening entertainment. Twenty years earlier, I remember returning each day from school to listen to Children’s Hour with Uncle Mac, and some years later, Dick Barton, accompanied by its captivating theme music, The Devil’s Gallop.
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Becoming a mother in 1966 gave me new eyes to look at children’s playground games. In my Preparatory years at Grey Friars, break times were taken up with skipping, ball games, hopscotch, cat’s cradles and glove puppets. During one term at CCHS we each made our own glove puppet and gave a performance in a makeshift box theatre (right) on the Grey Friars tennis lawn. The cat, front stage, was my own handiwork and the forerunner to our first real piece of needlework - a pair of knickers in the school summer dress material! Some fitted, many did not! A partial revival of the puppet era saw Andy Pandy dominate children’s television programmes in the late 1950s and early 60s.
The game of marbles seems to be the only remnant of past playtimes which has survived throughout the successive decades. I remember playing a hybrid game of marbles, called ‘Wallsie’ against the wall of All Saints House which backed on to the Grey Friars playground. This game gave the winner a scoop of up to ten marbles instead of a single one. It also gave me a passion for hiding away and storing the older, more interesting decorative ones as a collection. Many years later this inspired our son, aged 6, to do the same when he wanted something to collect. By the time he went to university ten thousand rolled around the house!
A new liberality pervaded the 1960s but it was also a decade of contrasts - the cropped hair of the skinheads and the long hair of the hippies, the platform soles of girls’ shoes and the beginnings of the stiletto heel (left) which would continue to punish posh wooden floors with a rash of miniature craters punched into the surface! What would Miss King, the CCHS headmistress in my time, have thought of these successors to the black lace-up plimsolls and stout outdoor shoes?
So many dramas and real-life stories unfolded in the newspapers during the 1960s that there was no need to seek out the stimulation of fiction. The Profumo Affair came to light and the defection to the West of the Russian Ballet’s superstar, Rudolf Nureyev, in 1961 and his subsequent remarkable dancing partnership with the much older Margot Fonteyn, which rejuvenated her.
Underlying all this uncertainty was an apparent frustration inherited from the 1950s when many people felt that the school leaving age of 15 and the lack of schools with sixth forms and post-school opportunities to study new subjects and develop new interests, gave very few the chance to go to university. The Central Council of Physical Recreation was one of the first organisations to recognise this and in the mid-1960s they started to introduce courses for adults who had never learned to swim. Most state schools did not have their own swimming pools, and other pools where tuition was available were few and far between. CRGS had a freezing cold open-air pool
built in 1923 (above right) and CCHS did not have its own until 1962.
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One of the first swimming courses for adults organised by the CCPR took place one evening a week at the old Garrison Pool, and I was fortunate to be asked to be one of the tutors. I adapted my teaching techniques and used a variety of learning styles, as I thought fit. The whole experience was an eye-opener at that time. Motivation, attendance and success rates were high and the courses were repeated for several years, eventually being taken over by the Colchester Evening Institute, as it was then called. I was no longer teaching full time having swapped the classroom for the swimming pool after our son was born. Swimming teaching fitted into weekends, evening and school holidays when Gerald, my husband, was free from his teaching post at CRGS and could child-mind. Bedtime, bathtime and supper time took on a new dimension!
The breakdown of barriers in society continued but there was still frustration felt by many people that they had not had the opportunity to go to university. I did not fully appreciate that, in the 1950s, only 4% of school leavers went to university, but now I feel very privileged to have been part of that percentage. This inadequacy was to be put right by Jenny Lee in Harold Wilson’s Government at that time. With great foresight and extensive and magnificent planning the Open University opened in 1971 - satirically called ‘The University of the Air’! Intended for anyone with or without any previous qualifications, its academic year ran from January to December. With my newly acquired experience of how adults learn from my tutoring of the CCPR swimming courses, I felt I must undergo this new format of education for myself and so I enrolled as a student. I could not possibly have foreseen that this innovative method of distance learning would bear a close resemblance to the replacement educational procedures of schools and universities during the Covid lockdowns of 50 years later.
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With some concessions for my previous qualifications, I completed my degree in Sociology, Psychology and Education - subjects a little different from my earlier studies - three years later, and was amongst the first students to graduate. Looking back on these years I have the greatest admiration for those students who had no previous qualifications and took seven years at least to complete their degrees whilst working full time, bringing up a family, coping with a disability or caring for an elderly relative. I had my mother to child-mind, and my husband for his after-school duties. The Open University went some way to dispelling the myth that adults are too old to learn anything new.
Each student shared a personal tutor and had a few face-to-face lectures held at schools or colleges in the evenings. Television programmes (black and white) were scheduled for early mornings and late at night. Teaching materials were sent out by post, experiments were set up in the kitchen and specimens - like sheep’s brains - came in parcels! A little later, cassette recordings were also used. All methods of study were historic - no internet, smart phones or today’s advanced devices. Each course studied involved a week-long Summer School held at conventional university campuses during the long summer vacation.
My time with the Open University gave me a greater personal understanding and interest in how adults learn and so, in 1974, when the part-time post of Deputy Principal came up at the Adult Education Centre in Grey Friars, I applied. This was the Administrative Centre, but other Colchester schools were used as evening venues for various subjects including the newly built Sir Charles Lucas School which had its own swimming pool.
Although I had visited Grey Friars several times during the intervening years since my school days, my first visit, after my appointment, was nostalgic. Grey Friars still had a hold over me with its magnificent stained glass windows, its imposing architecture and its mystery and peacefulness amidst the hubbub of the town centre. I relived the day when, as a 6 or 7 year old, I got my finger stuck in a hole in the playground wall, the story of the ghost on the top floor, and the formal disciplined morning Assembly. I went into my favourite classroom - the garden room - with its huge bay window and the imposing marble fireplace (left). Now in the more liberal 1970s when even ‘streaking’ was commonplace, it was difficult to
imagine that at the time of this photograph (possibly 1904) the sight of classical nude female figures carved in marble on the fireplace surround, had to be shielded from the innocent eyes of schoolchildren by a cloth drape to cover them!
The programme for adult education was developing fast when I joined the staff in 1974. Many of the classrooms which I remembered from my schooldays had new functions. The grand Assembly Hall now housed Flower Arranging and Scottish Country Dancing, the former science laboratory next door, was a Typing room, the room on the floor above was for Art classes, and the quiet peaceful top floor was set aside for Yoga.
There were only two swimming classes at this point in time and both at the Sir Charles Lucas School. I was based at this school three evenings a week overseeing all the classes there. The Principal, the late Mrs Enid Bishop, gave me ‘carte blanche’ to develop the swimming programme to meet demand. What happened to this programme in the next ten years was almost unbelievable. Every swimming pool of every type in Colchester which could be used, was used, and every aspect of swimming and all types of classes were introduced throughout the 1970s. These ranged from Swimming Teacher Training, though Swimming for the Blind and Disabled, to more Advanced Survival and Life Saving and Parent/Child and Baby Swim. Several sponsorships were picked up on the way and students and tutors alike began to excel. Awards were showered upon them for their efforts. At the peak of this success there were between 150 and 200 varied swimming classes per year with 30 tutors in action. The swimming programme allowed progression from class to class both to higher classes or laterally to other aspects of swimming.
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​The Grey Friars swimming team entered the 1980s on a triumphant note. By this time it was known countrywide for its achievements. The sponsored ‘Adult Learn to Swim Campaign’ had produced in a year more successful adults who had learned to swim than any other recognised centre in the country. That sparked off another award. Tutors themselves were awarded for the outstanding efforts and in 1981 blind students, the late Andrew Miller, and the late Joan Hilliard, were recognised and awarded for their swimming achievements and treated to a swim with the Olympic gold medallist, David Wilkie, by the sponsors, Cadburys.
The culmination of this decade of success came in 1983 when the Eastern Region of the Sports Council announced that Grey Friars had been awarded their special trophy for the most outstanding contribution to sport in its programme of swimming for adults, including the training of teachers and swimming for the disabled. I received the trophy on behalf of Grey Friars at a special ceremony (right).
Anselm, who was now of school age, kept me up to date. The Magic Roundabout on television, with Florence, Zebedee and Dougal, became one of his, and my, favourite programmes. I thought I was regressing to my childhood until I discovered that other
I hardly had time to notice the changes in fashions and tastes during the 1970s and 1980s because my swimming programme expanded so rapidly; but our son,
adults also enjoyed their political exchanges! I also developed a liking for ABBA and even tried the new playground passion for the Space Hopper (above left).
As the 1980s were drawing to a close, I often contemplated how ironic it was that Grey Friars had reached a peak performance in the teaching of swimming to adults when it did not even have its own swimming pool. In the early days of CCHS (1920-1957) it did have a bathtub-sized pond, with a few newts, which I used to sit beside each springtime in the late 1930s, or wander carefully amongst the yellow aconites which carpeted the ground under the canopy of the ancient Holm oak (right).
But there was still an unpredicted drama to come which would complete the story of the 1980s and change some aspects of the landscape for a considerable time.
