Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Mr Watson loved his banda sheets; those purple smelly sheets. He handed out masses of them. Someone threatened to make a costume out of his banda sheets at the end of the year, he had given out so many. I think Mrs Watson taught one day a week and she took those of us who needed extra lessons, in th...

What I found strange was that we were meant to behave like young ladies, but our home clothes, certainly whilst I was a junior, was trousers, you had to be a senior to wear a skirt! I think it changed at about the time I was a senior. I think you were allowed to bring a skirt specially to wear for t...

I think my problem is my dyslexia, which has got worse as I have got older and is certainly bad in the evening. I don't 'hear' what is being said, so I could never do dictee or oral work, but was fine on translation; but the rules were that you had to get over a certain number of marks for the oral ...

I think that in 1982 when I changed schools to go to a grammar school, it was unusual to have done calculus for O level. I had Mr Mulholland in the alpha Maths group. I think they only split maths into 3 groups, as I was in the A stream for everything else. Although being the bottom of the A stream ...

Christmas in Ones, certainly in my first couple of years was good. We had brilliant christmas decaorations, that a team of people had been painting in the cellar for weeks. I remember the weekend they went up, the day room was out of bounds, so we came down on the Monday morning to these amazing pai...

In the early 80s there was a Housemistress of 6s called Mrs Milligan.
My first job after college was a junior House mistress at St Mary's School in Calne (at the time Jade Jagger was thrown out) and Mrs Milligan was there as an asst Hosemistress (and yes the adverts were still in The Lady).

For some reason I ended up as Miss Gravett's messenger. Ones had to do this, one person in maybe 4th or 5th year, and those who played an instrument or played in a school team were let off - I seem to think there was a problem the following year as everyone did one or the other. I was allowed to lea...

I remember going on Mr Stiff's Cambridge trip. Did we go in the second year? I would have gone in '79, but I am sure that Mr Stiff died before I left Hertford, so if Vonny remembers going she was probably the last year to go. I can't remember much about the trip, although I remember being walked thr...

I remember that sports day was the last Saturday of term (beginning of July?), with sports at Ashbourne in the morning and cricket (fathers versus 1st XI) in the afternoon. Ones won for two or three years running in the later 70s; I think the same years that Bjorn won Wimbledon, which was on at the ...