Housemistresses

Share your memories and stories from the Hertford Christ's Hospital School, which closed in 1985, when the two schools integrated to the Horsham site....

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Kim2s70-77
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by Kim2s70-77 »

WOW!!! Just went to the US Amazon site. They have 2 copies (used) for $75 + shipping!!! That is a tad steep, methinks!!
seventhirty
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by seventhirty »

I have a feeling that the blue 'crimplene' sacks were for 6th formers - was it their summer uniform, when the rest of us were in stripes? I don't remember wearing it myself, have a suspicion that it was dropped by popular request during Miss Tucker's time. We referred to the sunday blue tunics as 'sunday sacks'. I vividly remember trying to play the cello whilst wearing them, it was not for the faint hearted, perched on the edge of the stage with the Lord Mayor and other elderly gentlemen immediately below. If I remeber rightly, in my final years we cellists were given black cloths to spread over our knees !
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by Lizzyfrog »

Having recently discovered this site I can't stop reading it! It's amazing and cathartic for me to find you lovely women writing about things I remember which affected me very deeply but which I have never really shared with anyone. Having read through all the posts here in one sitting last night, I am going back to the general housemistresses topic if that's ok. I cried so sadly over the Mrs Dean posts and realise now how lightly we got off with "Ma B" - Mrs Browne - in 7s (68-71). She was a bit distant and stern but she was mostly quite kind to the juniors and let us watch "The Virginian" in her sitting room (the height of indulgence then). And she was fairly lenient over minor misdemeanors, though she did once leave me standing on a bench outside her room, in my nightie, in the drafty dark and cold, for a couple of scary and uncomfortable hours. I'd been sent down to her by a dorm monitor for persistently talking after lights, and I waited and waited on that bench, hearing the tantalisingly muffled sound of Ma B's TV for what seemed like the longest time, and then her snoring gently; then the telly closed down and she woke up and shuffled about for a while before coming out to go to bed. She was extremely startled to see me and had clearly forgotten I was there! Why it didn't occur to me to knock on the door and ask if I could go back to bed - or just GO, for goodness' sake! - I don't know: probably we were just so programmed to accept whatever those in authority threw at us. Another Ma B memory kicked in when I read some earlier posts about the horrors of those bulky sanitary towels. I don't know if this was the case in all the houses, but in 7s when you needed "STs", you had to knock on Ma B's door and euphemistically ask for a "packet". She would then ask "upstairs or downstairs?" Downstairs meant loo paper, which I suppose would also have been too vulgar to ask for directly. I clearly remember the first time I told her I need an "upstairs packet": she exclaimed "Oh, my dear, congratulations, I didn't know you had become a woman!" This seems like an amazingly positive affirmation for a time when we all called it "The Curse", and made me feel quite proud and grown up despite the cramps, inconvenience and embarrassment which I also remember.... Bless her.
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englishangel
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by englishangel »

We didn't actually have to go and ASK for a packet of Dr Whites but we did have to sign them out in a little book kept in the drawer with them. Whether it was ever checked or not I have no idea. And I thought the cleaners replaced the Izal loo paper.
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Lizzyfrog
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by Lizzyfrog »

englishangel wrote:We didn't actually have to go and ASK for a packet of Dr Whites but we did have to sign them out in a little book kept in the drawer with them. Whether it was ever checked or not I have no idea. And I thought the cleaners replaced the Izal loo paper.
Yes, I think perhaps we had to sign a little book as well... definitely had to go and ask Ma B though (or maybe that was only the first time, a kind of Registration of Menstruation!?). As for the Izal - I expect the cleaners did replenish it and it was only if it ran out in between that we had to go and request some more from the cupboard to which Ma B held the key. I was only there three years so all my memories are from a junior's perspective and there are great gaps, I am sure (for example I don't even remember having cleaners, though of course we must have done. We did a fair amount of chores ourselves too, didn't we? I remember "duty" between house prayers and breakfast, with a rota for 'putting on' and 'taking off' for the brass doorknobs and light switches, sink-cleaning, dusting etc. My favourite was 'taking off' brasses - so satisfying! Sadly this did not instill any lasting enthusiasm for housework.
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by Fjgrogan »

What it instilled in me was the feeling of being unable to do a quick flick round with a duster; if I do it at all it has to be very thorough, so mostly I don't! Add to CH training the fact that I have a father who was a complete perfectionist - 'if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well' - and is it any wonder that I am neurotic?!
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Kim2s70-77
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by Kim2s70-77 »

A clean house is a sign of a broken computer.'
Fjgrogan - I am going to have to borrow this sometime - it is too good not to!!
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by Fjgrogan »

'a clean house is a sign of a broken computer' - it was sent to me by a cousin who regularly used to send me vast quantities of 'spam' until she got diverted onto Facebook and I deliberately chose not to! It was part of a long list, I seem to remember, and had an interesting picture to go with it, which I am one day going to turn into a cross-stitch chart (when I have nothing else to do!).
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'A clean house is a sign of a broken computer.'
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by Angela Woodford »

A vivid and horrible flashback!

It was 1970, midday, Form Time on a Friday in the LV1 with Miss Wilson.

Miss Wilson's gimlet eyes fastened on a poor girl who suffered from greasy hair. She demanded to know why this girl had not washed her hair. How we all cringed! :oops: Myself, I felt furious :twisted: that Miss Wilson should come out with something so humiliating in front of the whole Form.

It was Mary Gaskell who spoke up. "Because we're not allowed to wash our hair!"

Hair washing was still officially a Saturday activity, ISTR, even in 1970. But in 6's we were lucky enough to have dear old Pot, who really wouldn't have noticed if we'd foamed with Sunsilk for Normal at any time of day, providing she'd got a Craven 'A' cork-tipped fag leaving its telltale plume of smoke behind her back/in the ashtray.

Mary's Housemistress, Lil, was hot on hairwashing only once a week. But I don't think any of the other Housemistresses would have noticed. (Did we have an accessible House hairdryer?)

Did your Housemistress notice if you'd washed your hair?

Mary Gaskell, I salute you for speaking out!
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by Pixie »

Lil was my housemistress too and though she was a stickler for the rules she wasn't unkind. I think she had our best interests at heart in a remote kind of way.
Whenever I sit on a step, even now, I can hear her say 'don't sit on that, you'll get piles!'
Last edited by Pixie on Tue Sep 21, 2010 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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midget
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by midget »

How times change! We got piles from sitting on radiators.
We had to get pemission to wash our hair, on Saturday, as I recall, and mostly once a fortnight.
I can't imagine the fuss there would have been if one wased hair any old time.
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by Katharine »

I'm glad that you remember hair washing once a fortnight, Maggie. That's how I remember it in 6s too. If you were going out on the Saturday you were allowed to wash it the previous Wednesday. (Not sure how that worked on Long Sats though!)
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icomefromalanddownunder
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by icomefromalanddownunder »

midget wrote:How times change! We got piles from sitting on radiators.
We had to get pemission to wash our hair, on Saturday, as I recall, and mostly once a fortnight.
I can't imagine the fuss there would have been if one wased hair any old time.
According to Pot one develops floating liver AND piles from sitting on radiators. I think that we may have mentioned this previously, but I still don't know what floating liver feels like or how it is diagnosed.
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by Fjgrogan »

I remember it as floating kidneys! Anyway I do wonder whether the reference to piles is a corruption of pyelitis which is a mild kidney infection - I was in hospital with it at the age of seven, and I think somebody then mentioned sitting on radiators, which is hilarious because the only form of heating in our very damp flat in those days was an open fire! Sorry, Katharine, I really can't remember how often we were allowed to wash our hair; I am aware though that the older I get the less inclined I am to do so too frequently!
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Re: Housemistresses

Post by chaosriddenyears »

I vaguely remember hair-washing being on Friday evenings and otherwise not allowed, although if that is right it was only up until the 4th form. By the time we were in Upper Dorm I don't think anyone bothered about it anymore.

I have also heard about getting piles from sitting on radiators - and not wearing a vest will give you a cold in your kidneys!
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