Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories thread

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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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by Katharine »

Angela Woodford wrote:Yes, yes, I well remember those circular scorch marks! Funny!

Suppose 6's had caught fire? :shock:

It wouldn't have worked out too badly, though. Imagine. The Hag sacked for negligence. :lol:
I have an idea it was one of the rare nights when The Hag was away. I cannot remember which form we were, probably LV, I seem to remember we were all in pinnies, it is a bit vague in my memory. I think we only burnt the paint - which smelt horrible and put an end to the proceedings.
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by Angela Woodford »

Fire hazards! Try as I may, *I can't remember any fire extinguishers around the place - but there must have been!

It was always nice to go out onto the fire escape (rusty-red metal platform and staircase) outside Upper Dorm and enjoy the sun there for a moment, if I didn't look down (whoops, touch of vertigo!)

Officially, nobody had plug-in hair care devices to be left on carelessly. :lol: Nobody smoked but Housemistresses. Health and Safety awareness lurked decades away.

* Hold it! Maybe an extinguisher in the hall outside the Housemistress's sitting-room? But if Pot had set fire to the place with a neglected Craven 'A', I wouldn't have known how to operate the thing...
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by Pixie »

englishangel wrote:
Angela Woodford wrote:
I can also remember hearing that the more religiously inspired of the newly-confirmed would set off for Communion determined that nothing should break their fast but the Sacrament! There's dietary discipline!
And how many of us in later years didn't have a bite to eat until 1 o'clock. I certainly never had breakfast as a student (except at weekends) nor as a nurse, 5 more minutes in bed were much more important. I didn't eat breakfast regularly until I was 31 and pregnant.
On the other hand, I have never been able to go without breakfast but then I didn't get confirmed so never attended Communion!
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by englishangel »

Pixie wrote: On the other hand, I have never been able to go without breakfast but then I didn't get confirmed so never attended Communion!
Nor was I nor did I. Funnily enough I seem to remember you in a tartan blouse, grey dress and veil, so memory plays strange tricks, perhaps it was just Ailsa, or perhaps not even her.
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by Angela Woodford »

englishangel wrote:nor as a nurse, 5 more minutes in bed were much more important.
I was just planning to get to somewhere on time on Sunday and this quotation from Mary has come back into my mind!

It's a CH thing that has stayed with me all my life. I've got to be early and organised for work/appointment/train/whatever, or, and I hear my unconscious clicking into place here, I will be punished.

Thinking of student nursehood, my fellow students, who would stay in bed for a happy five minutes longer, were amazed when I'd be up at least half an hour earlier worrying about the day and the prospect of being late "on duty". It was exactly like being in an anxiety state as a junior Wardrobe Room girl, dressing under the bedclothes, panicking, on Clean Hanky Day!

I've still got to be early for things. It drives my husband crazy. I've never been able to shake off that inculcated-by-CH-phobia! :roll:
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by Angela Pratt 56-63 »

englishangel wrote:
Angela Woodford wrote:
I can also remember hearing that the more religiously inspired of the newly-confirmed would set off for Communion determined that nothing should break their fast but the Sacrament! There's dietary discipline!
Sunday communion in my day was before breakfast anyway...So sip of wine on empty rumbling tums....Still we always raced back to wards (SUNDAY breakfast only) with appetite and enthusiasm. Rice crispies only on Sunday too, I think.
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by Jo »

It was before proper breakfast, but sometime around 1970 coffee and biscuits were introduced for early communicants. The rumour was that a couple of people had fainted and it had been decided that growing girls needed something to tide them over till breakfast (which was later on Sundays). I don't think the coffee was provided because I have a vague memory of my parents buying me some, which was otherwise not allowed for juniors (I was confirmed early). But unless I'm imagining things I have a feeling we had the little packets of biscuits like the ones in hotel rooms.
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by Pixie »

englishangel wrote:
Pixie wrote: On the other hand, I have never been able to go without breakfast but then I didn't get confirmed so never attended Communion!
Nor was I nor did I. Funnily enough I seem to remember you in a tartan blouse, grey dress and veil, so memory plays strange tricks, perhaps it was just Ailsa, or perhaps not even her.
No EA, not me! I decided early on in my school career that I wasn't going to suffer any extra chapel services - two on a sunday was more than enough. Ailsa did get confirmed though.
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Post by midget »

We had acup of tea a (compulsory), and I think a biscuit before communion. I did faint once in chapel, maybe that was why the tea was a must.
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Mending night?

Post by Angela Woodford »

Finding a grey lambswool V-neck at the back of the wardrobe with a couple of holes in it, I stopped house-moving-packing and sat to do some mending. I admit -:? - I really enjoyed doing two beautiful darns which even the exacting Millie would have "passed".

It reminded me - mending night was on a Friday. But I only remember this in a Junior House. Did we have Friday mending nights in every House? Before or after prep? I remember trying to mend holes in those dreadful thick clay-coloured ribbed stockings with a much darker brown mending silk which was wound onto cards. Your darn had to look good - in a non-matching colour, the repair really showed. Was it Deb Bowers :?: who once had a stocking with almost more darn than stocking? I especially liked using the House darning mushroom.

Then... it suddenly came back to me - the craze for threading up dried melon seeds to make a necklace! It could be tricky when virtually every cloakroom basin was filled with the slimy innards of a honeydew melon to cleanse the pips. Everybody was squishing the basinful of stringy, slippery fibrous melon to prepare the seeds for the threading process - and the tea-towel from the kitchen was used to wrap and dry off the seeds.... :roll: How quickly the tea-towel became unusable!

Not that you could wear the necklace once created!
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Re: Mending night?

Post by Jo »

Angela Woodford wrote:Finding a grey lambswool V-neck at the back of the wardrobe with a couple of holes in it, I stopped house-moving-packing and sat to do some mending. I admit -:? - I really enjoyed doing two beautiful darns which even the exacting Millie would have "passed".

It reminded me - mending night was on a Friday. But I only remember this in a Junior House. Did we have Friday mending nights in every House? Before or after prep? I remember trying to mend holes in those dreadful thick clay-coloured ribbed stockings with a much darker brown mending silk which was wound onto cards. Your darn had to look good - in a non-matching colour, the repair really showed. Was it Deb Bowers :?: who once had a stocking with almost more darn than stocking? I especially liked using the House darning mushroom.

Then... it suddenly came back to me - the craze for threading up dried melon seeds to make a necklace! It could be tricky when virtually every cloakroom basin was filled with the slimy innards of a honeydew melon to cleanse the pips. Everybody was squishing the basinful of stringy, slippery fibrous melon to prepare the seeds for the threading process - and the tea-towel from the kitchen was used to wrap and dry off the seeds.... :roll: How quickly the tea-towel became unusable!

Not that you could wear the necklace once created!
I arrived after junior houses and I remember mending on Friday nights. If I remember correctly we didn't have prep on Friday nights so I guess it was mending instead. I too quite enjoyed darning once I'd learned to do it.

I vaguely remember the melon seeds, and I also everyone frantically munching coconut in order to sand and polish bits of shell to make into jewellery too :D
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by Angela Woodford »

Coconut? Coconut! How brilliant! I don't remember this at all, but how clever!

Another cloakroom-basin occupier was hoarding a mug of milk, letting it go off (that didn't take long!) and suspending the solids in a knotted hanky from a basin tap to make a sort of cottage cheese. Judy Evans, for an enthusiastic week or so, made "yoghurt" to sell to the juniors.

(Why am I writing this? I move house in three hours; the computer must go off now. It's a displacement activity. :roll: Computer off - goodbye!)
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by DavidRawlins »

[quote="Angela Woodford"]Coconut? Coconut! How brilliant! I don't remember this at all, but how clever!

Another cloakroom-basin occupier was hoarding a mug of milk, letting it go off (that didn't take long!) and suspending the solids in a knotted hanky from a basin tap to make a sort of cottage cheese. Judy Evans, for an enthusiastic week or so, made "yoghurt" to sell to the juniors.

We made cottage cheese in Col A for the same purpose and found one willing buyer.
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by Katharine »

I've said it before, that I am sure we had mending night on Wednesdays, and no homework then. During Lent we had Lent services, Lent Lectures where the sermon was the most important part on Wednesdays. To my embarrassment my father did these twice while I was there. The first time there was an announcement at lunch that everyone should take their Book of Common Prayer. He started his sermon saying something like "if Hertford is anything like Horsham in the 30s, you go to Mattins and Evensong every Sunday and don't have a clue what is going on. This Lent we are going to study these two services". There was a murmur throughout the chapel that he was an OB.

The second time he did the Lent Lectures, I was in the VI form and 6s Chapel Girl*, I arranged it with the others that I lit the candles each week for the service and then had the exquisite pleasure of walking back from the chapel to our car, parked outside DR's house, with my father. I had a goodbye kiss each week!

As father was a cleric in the St Albans Diocese I had met several of our local visiting preachers, and the bishops who came for the Confirmation services. I never knew whether to recognise them or not. As a junior I hated standing out from the crowd.

* Mary, we have had the conversation before, in the time of Senior Houses, each had a Chapel Girl, who prepared the altar for the Sunday Services and any during the week. Chapel dusting took place once a week and I think was done by members of that house on a Friday afternoon.
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Re: Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories th

Post by fra828 »

Katharine wrote:I've said it before, that I am sure we had mending night on Wednesdays, and no homework then. During Lent we had Lent services, Lent Lectures where the sermon was the most important part on Wednesdays. To my embarrassment my father did these twice while I was there. The first time there was an announcement at lunch that everyone should take their Book of Common Prayer. He started his sermon saying something like "if Hertford is anything like Horsham in the 30s, you go to Mattins and Evensong every Sunday and don't have a clue what is going on. This Lent we are going to study these two services". There was a murmur throughout the chapel that he was an OB.

The second time he did the Lent Lectures, I was in the VI form and 6s Chapel Girl*, I arranged it with the others that I lit the candles each week for the service and then had the exquisite pleasure of walking back from the chapel to our car, parked outside DR's house, with my father. I had a goodbye kiss each week!

As father was a cleric in the St Albans Diocese I had met several of our local visiting preachers, and the bishops who came for the Confirmation services. I never knew whether to recognise them or not. As a junior I hated standing out from the crowd.

* Mary, we have had the conversation before, in the time of Senior Houses, each had a Chapel Girl, who prepared the altar for the Sunday Services and any during the week. Chapel dusting took place once a week and I think was done by members of that house on a Friday afternoon.

I can remember chapel dusting on Saturday afternoons also, as well as gardening in the summer and card games such as bridge in the winter. Speaking of Hertford, Not seen Englishangel on here for a while, hope she is ok.
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