NEWS FROM OLD GIRLS
​Liz White (Bailey 1960-66)
Having tried to persuade Old Girls to send in their memories I thought it was about time I did!
New Arrival at CCHS!
For the school year 1959-60 I attended the Blyth School – a Norwich Grammar School – and was automatically transferred to Colchester County High School for Girls in September 1960. (Left: School photograph, October 1960) This was a newly built (1957) three-storey building in Norman Way and in 1960 was still surrounded by fields. I remember watching the harvests being gathered whilst bored in a lesson, or the tractors working the fields in the spring. Now, of course,
these fields are covered by two other schools. To get to school I had to walk along the Queen’s Road folly – the local name for a footpath. This was supposed to be for pedestrians, but inevitably the Royal Grammar School boys would cycle rapidly along there, satchels and coats flying and beware the pedestrian! To be fair, most of the High School girls did the same. There were nettles along the side and plenty of evidence of dogs – it was a little smelly. The folly led to Park Road, an unmade rough road, which led to the end of a hedge through which I passed, across a rough piece of land (now a car park) and into the school grounds.
It all seemed so different from Norwich and the new building seemed intimidating and less friendly than the old worn buildings of the Blyth School. It was a typical late ‘50s flat-roofed building with lots of glass, wood and concrete and with herring bone parquet floors throughout – the noise created by so many girls had nowhere to go but bounce back and amplify. No wonder the mistresses were always commanding us to be quiet! Girls did not enter by the main doors – they were for important people! We had to go to the south entrance and wait until the doors were opened, but at least in those days there was some covering from inclement weather. Inside, the cloakrooms stretched to left and right and offered sufficient hooks for 600 girls. It was rather noisome as all the shoebags hung in there, as well as coats, and, with few girls taking them home during the term, the plimsolls and sweaty sports clothing produced a smell which is so evocative today as school cloakrooms still emit it!
The proverbial bike sheds were very evident to the north of the school and housed dozens of bikes during the school day. I walked to school most of the time as I didn’t want to leave my very new Raleigh Palm Beach bike (left) in the sheds. It was pale blue with the obligatory shiny chrome, a three gear Sturmey Archer device and a bell attached to the straight handlebars. The effect was
completed by a small leather saddle bag containing the necessary repair tools. It also had its own stand.
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I remember being very surprised that the girls in my form (Upper IV P –Year 8) found my accent amusing. I had no accent, I thought, but I actually had quite a strong Norwich accent which was very different from the Colchester accent, although only some sixty miles away. On meeting a friend many years later (2008!), she says she remembers my accent and how different it was from the local one. Sadly, I gradually lost my Norwich accent, mostly because it seemed to cause great hilarity in the form, but I don’t remember any unkindness.
Most form rooms had single desks, pushed together in twos, arranged in rows facing front but rooms such as Y (the Geography Room) with specific uses had large tables with drawers that we used for our books when we were in the Upper Vth (Year 11). All rooms were very light, thanks to the huge windows and it was easy to stray from the lessons as there was so much to look at outside, especially from the upper floors. In the summer the south facing form rooms became very hot and the large heavy Venetian blinds could be let down, but not without difficulty as the strings always got twisted and could cause much welcome disturbance and wasting of time in a boring lesson! My initial form room was north facing on the top floor with Mrs Joanna Bailey as our form mistress. My name, of course, was Bailey and we all found this quite unnecessarily amusing but the joke soon wore thin and was forgotten. Each room had a letter of the alphabet, so they were quite easy to locate and when the bell went after the 35 minute lesson, we all had to traipse around the school to the next class. It was a good time waster and you had plenty of time to chat. There were four lessons in the morning, split by a break and three lessons after lunch with only a short break as far as I can remember after the second lesson. We had to be in school for the register to be taken by 0840 and then make our way to the hall for assembly by 9 o’clock.
The headmistress for the whole of my stay there was Miss Katherine Vashon Baker, (right) or VB as she was known. For the whole of the six years I was there she seemed to wear the same green and beige coarse bouclé-type suit with the colours in wide horizontal stripes. Once a term as she entered the hall there would be a gasp for she would be wearing a smarter dark tweed suit – there was a Governors’ Meeting that day! Each day the head girl
would walk in front of her carrying the open Bible and her notes, climb the few steps to the stage, place the books on the table and join the school prefects arranged in a semi-circle behind VB. We all chanted “Good morning, Miss Vashon-Baker” in response to her greeting and she announced the hymn, which was followed by prayers and a reading from the lectern. Each form would take the reading duty in turn for a week. I don’t know whether it was more terrifying to have to read or more embarrassing to have to listen to small girls nervously reading in front of the whole school. Announcements were made, rules reiterated and we were dismissed to our classes, marching out in an orderly manner to the strains of the Radetsky March or something similar performed by one of the music mistresses. Occasionally suitably accomplished pupils would play the splendid grand piano for assembly. My friend Caroline often played and I was constantly directed to do so, but steadfastly refused. The St Trinian’s films were popular at this time and on one memorable occasion at the end of term we convinced poor Caroline that it would be a laugh if she played the theme tune to egress the hall. After much persuasion she did so with a straight face, but it created many suppressed giggles from the pupils and, I believe, some of the younger staff, but I remain firmly convinced to this day that VB never realised what was going on! The Roman Catholic girls regretted that they had missed this for they, together with the few Jews at the school, attended their own assemblies – mixing of religions was not encouraged, especially by the Catholic Church!
As the school was in a garrison town there was a constant movement of girls in and out. The girls were used to this and quickly made newcomers feel welcome. I never felt like an outsider, but I think the fact that I was prepared to join in the jokes, naughtiness and other activities within the class, I was accepted fairly quickly. My demeanour was naturally one of “butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth” (left: school photo October 1962) whereas the opposite was in fact true. I delighted in being able to cause a certain amount of disruption and noise at any time, yet not be suspected. Watching all the results was greatly amusing! Was I really that bad?
During our Lower and Middle Vth years (Years 9 and 10) Mrs Douglas, a lovely, gentle, vicar’s wife, took us for Scripture in one of the ‘huts’ – two additional rooms (V and U) built slightly away from the school to accommodate the ‘bulge’ years. We had our lesson in U just before our morning break when we could eat the cake and biscuits that we had brought with us. Once she had opened the Bible Mrs Douglas seemed to be in another world and we did pretty well what we wanted in a very quiet way, including homework due in at a later lesson! One trick, when sitting next to Anna, who brought her mother’s lovely homemade fruit cake to school, was to crawl on all fours up and down the aisles between the desks and distribute bite size pieces to our friends. Whether Mrs Douglas saw and determined not to take action I do not know, but it caused great amusement! We did, however, get our just deserts. The result of two years of Mrs Douglas’s lessons was that in our Upper Vth year we were all dreadfully behind in our studies – not that we were taking it at ‘O’ level – but our next teacher was VB herself and she demanded to see our books. The form went very quiet and as soon as the lesson had finished we sought out the two girls who had taken notes in the previous two years and copied their books, passing ours and the original on to other girls! VB, as an experienced teacher, was probably well aware of the similarity in our notes!
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This can be continued another time - if Old Girls are interested!
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