Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

In the olden days, when dinosaurs roamed the world and ladies wore skirts, housemasters weren't married (except in the houses Great Plum mentions). This practice gradually changed, and in about 1960, houses were built in East and West Gun Copse roads (that's when the rot started), mostly for housema...

midget wrote:While eating lunch today, I wondered if anyone from Hertford remembered butter beans with weevils in? It was a regular occurance in the 40s.
Maggie

The things they did, to make sure you got enough protein!

sejintenej wrote:
That change came about when they appointed a new kitchen superintendent

This was Mrs Johnson, who always wanted to abolish kiff-bowls, but somehow never managed.

One of the problems with Dutch if you speak German is that many words look the same and mean something different. For example Dutch buses have a notice asking you not to disturb the driver's "aandacht". This means "attention" in Dutch, but "Andacht" in German is "d...

If you want to cause a ruckus at a Norwegian party, ask them what the Norwegian for "my book" is. With a bit of luck, you'll get three different answers: Min bok, boken min, and boka mi. The first is basically standard Danish with a Norwegian pronunciation (Ibsen's language), and is posh. ...

Did you have Marmite Fritters at Hertford? One of the stand-bys of tea at Horsham. Though to be fair, once the new kitchens were installed in (I think) 1954, food at Horsham was no worse than British food generally at the time (apart from Sunday roast dinner, which was disgusting). Visiting sports t...

Was Farlington not the school that Olive Peto became headmistress of? (I believe she had to do a great deal of sweeping clean.)

Those were the days. I once posted a letter at CH in morning break and my mother in London got it the same afternoon. There was a limit to the postmen's tolerance though. I remember someone writing a spoof loveletter to a (real) girl, which his "friends" posted for him. Despite his waiting...

Nice one, hopgood!

A thoroughly innocent picture of CH girls in London on St Matthew's Day c. 1960 (see Hertford Photos thread) gave rise to a discussion of their underwear. In the interests of sexual equality, here's an observation on the boys' underwear. The only significant change in our clothing during my time was...

See my new thread under Reminiscences. Back to the photo: there is, in Plumley's "Christ's Hospital in Photographs II" a (much better) picture which may even have been of the same girls on the same occasion, or very close (I recognize the boy on the extreme left of that photo). This sectio...

Tizer, Cydrax... 3d deposit on the bottle

(15c on equivalent bottles in Germany now = about 12p = 2s 5d, a tenfold increase, less than inflation)

Jo raises an interesting point. When I was in Libya two years ago, I noted that the womenswear shops had a great deal of quite sexy stuff (underwear and outerwear) in their windows. You don't of course see it being worn in the street. While Libyan women and girls don't normally wear veils, and don't...

"Pearcey" in the above photos is Leonard Pearcey, who is quite well known in the musical world. (He was a noted bass singer at CH).

The housemaster TE Archbold died in office. He had a skiing accident during the holidays and died a few weeks later. His funeral was held in chapel.

My coat weighed in at 22lbs - say 10 kilos so imagine carrying that around from 7.15am until 9pm. True. But that didn't make it warm. It was draughty in winter and too hot in summer. One of the nice things about being a button grecian was that the coat was much lighter (besides being better tailore...