Memories - a Tale of Two Halls
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Joan Gurney (1938-1951)
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This is the Tale of Two Halls - one at Grey Friars, and one at North Hill. If walls could talk, each would have many stories to tell. The former, now tastefully restored as the main dining-room of the Grey Friars Hotel, can still be enjoyed in all its original glory and in its new setting; but the latter, at the Sixth Form College, has been altered, redesigned, and divided, with features added, and details obliterated, so that it is now unrecognisable. Both were originally the centre of life, at Colchester County High School for Girls, when the school was divided into Junior and Senior Departments, in separate buildings.
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The Hall at Grey Friars has a long history. It was built by the Franciscan nuns in 1904 who had newly arrived from France and added it to the 1755 house to be used as their chapel. This extension to the west shows evidence of their occupation - the two stained glass windows (left) bearing the initials JMJ (Jesus, Mary, Joseph), the Holy Water piscina (above right) and the Confessional Box (right). The latter is today visible behind the Bar of the hotel’s dining room and the irony of this juxtaposition will not be lost on those alumnae of CCHS who were there in the time of Miss Ruth King, the fearsome headmistress (1928-52) with her strong beliefs! The date of the completion of the chapel is recorded on a plaque (1904) set into the outside of the north wall (below).
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Both halls were photographed in the 1920s. The Hall at North Hill was part of the design of a purpose-built school, completed in 1908, and opened in 1912. It was intended for the pupils of CCHS who had previously been moved from building to building with no permanent home, but the girls of CCHS had to share the site with the boys of the Technical College, and so, by 1919/20, the building was overflowing, and this is when Essex County Council purchased Grey Friars, to accommodate part of CCHS, and the pupils were divided between the two sites.
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By the 1930s, the Senior Department of CCHS still occupied only the classrooms at the west end of the ground floor, and first floor, at the North Hill site, whilst the Technical and Art Schools occupied the east end of these floors, together with the whole of the second floor. They used the front entrance to the school, whilst the girls used the back entrance - and never the twain should meet!
The Hall at North Hill (left) was towards the west end of the first floor, and neither it, nor the Grey Friars Hall was large enough to house the whole school - Senior, Junior and Preparatory Departments - and so a morning Assembly was held at the start of each day at both Grey Friars and North Hill for the usual CCHS occupants of each building. The ceremony had a religious theme, and hymns were sung with gusto to a piano accompaniment. In my time at Grey Friars, Miss King could not be in two places at once, but seemed to take the Assembly at Grey Friars more often than not, whilst her Deputy took the Assembly at North Hill.
Many of the minor details of the Hall at Grey Friars (right) are still impressive - the archway over a shallow platform, the parquet floor, the winding mechanisms for opening the windows and the coffered ceiling. Ribstalls were added to the back wall when it was transformed from chapel to a simple school gymnasium in the third decade of the 20th Century. I can see my gym class now (it was not even called physical education) all lined up in neat rows, wearing black plimsolls, white socks or black stockings, our usual blouses and navy tunics, which concealed our much loved liberty bodices. We all faced the same direction, never moving from the same twelve inch spot for the whole lesson. Identical
arms and legs moved in an identical direction at identical angles with the regularity of a metronome. Woe betide anybody who spoiled the synchronisation! I found a brief respite from the monotony when we were asked to lie on the floor in a primitive attempt at relaxation. The gym teacher (Miss Holmes) then went round lifting an arm or leg of each pupil to see if it fell back to the floor ‘like a rag doll’. Mine never did, but stiff as a board, it fell half way, never hitting the floor but sticking out at an angle as if in levitation!
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So many memories were brought back to me when I was exploring the attics just before Grey Friars was sold in 2008 - a vaulting horse, an old wooden desk, some books and benches with hooks at the end. The latter used to be attached to the ribstalls at an angle so that we could exercise our biceps by pulling ourselves uphill along the polished seat. Singing lessons took place here and musicians played to us and speakers including Walter de la Mare enthralled us,. The activities in the Hall at Grey Friars were legendary.
Pupils from Grey Friars aged about 13 or 14 moved to North Hill after the Lower and Upper IVs (now Years 7 and 8). The Hall here was not much bigger than that at Grey Friars, but what it lacked in history and beauty it made up for in drama and mystery. It had ribstalls along the back wall similar to Grey Friars, but it also had the novelty of a tiered gallery and ..... climbing ropes! There were parallel bars, vaulting horses and a platform which was more like a stage than that at Grey Friars. Acting and Drama therefore played a much larger part. All the other activities which had taken place at Grey Friars could now be developed. It was recognised that a little less clothing was needed for sport and exercise and senior girls graduated to blouses and knickers with socks and while plimsolls, but special kit for PE was still a long way off!
Here I learned to climb a rope, perform gate vault on the bars and long fly on the vaulting horse, but I did not impress my father (who had been a successful half-miler in his youth), when I practised these activities on the five-bar gates at home on the farm.
The gallery was a very exciting part of the North Hill Hall. It had carved wooden panelling and an embossed front, and to be a pupil seated in the gallery for a performance felt like being in the dress circle. I played a violin for a time in the school orchestra, which often played for functions from the gallery. It had a special feeling. But the most interesting part of the gallery was the door on to the second floor corridor which was Tech School territory! Quite often the boys would open the door to get a special view of the girls exercising in their knickers below. The sound of cheering and clapping descended to the Hall and a few stifled squeals and signs of tolerance drifted upwards from the girls.
The gallery also had another door on the opposite side which led on to a flat roof. As sixth formers we were often escorted by a teacher on to this forbidden area to view the landscape spread out below us (right). But more often, we bent the rules to escape to this advantage point which, of course, if caught, was punishable.
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I returned as a teacher to the North Hill building in the 1960s, when it was the Gilberd Technical School, established after the reorganisation of Secondary Education into Grammar,
Technical, and Secondary Modern Schools. Here, once again, the Hall at North Hill witnessed a drama. One summer term, a blocked gulley above the lecture theatre on the second floor could not cope with the torrential rain, during a violent thunderstorm, and an impenetrable curtain of water suddenly descended, cutting me off from the class, which I was teaching. Water poured out into the corridor, spreading to both east and west and down the front stairs. Activities in the nearby Hall were suddenly interrupted by the screams of terrified pupils, which floated through the gallery door, and echoed around the gym lesson. The school caretaker, thinking that my cry for help was an exaggeration, came with a small mop and an even smaller bucket, as my class fled to a dry area. It was a drama long remembered by many Gilberd pupils ,who requested my infamous meteorological lesson frequently, instead of any other geographical topic which I had planned!
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One final mystery of the North Hill Hall has never been explained. When the building was being redesigned, in preparation for its conversion to the Sixth Form College, an eerie vertical shaft was discovered, under a trap door, in the floor of the Hall. We may never know what it was for.
It is a pity that walls really cannot talk. How many other stories from the two Halls are still hidden away and waiting to be set free an,d entertain us, once again?
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