A Girl's School from Outside

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Managed to look on FR using a friend's computer, and surprised to see Sophie as leaving 1976, with previous school leaving 1969.

1969-76? I could believe I'd been wrong in thinking it was her final year when our paths crossed, though it's giving me a strange feeling, but in the Latin story you say she was in your year Jo, yet you are 1967-75.

You can just enter your age into FR and it calculates when you 'should'/ 'might' have left, rather than entering actual dates.

[lonely_wolf]

The side doors have gone now - I noticed that on recent visits to Hertford. There were two side doors; one on the kitchen, and then the back/cloakroom door which as Vonny said was the main entrance for everyone below the 6th form. I'm not sure how they've done such a good job of doing an "invisible mend" - they must have taken down the loos and possibly the cloakrooms too. There is also a new door on each house on the other side, below the stair window, which seems to be an emergency exit. I suppose it is at the top of the cellar steps inside.

Doors plural, OMG. Well where were they? I thought there'd be one on that bit that sticks out, but the E side facing the avenue has a drainpipe and the N side has windows. Maybe the W side of the bit-that-sticks-out? It's hard to say what's new or old brickwork, looks like they went to some trouble to re-point and clean brickwork for commercial letting. But unless they've moved windows around there aren't many places a door could have been on that side of the house.

Which led me to wonder about the overall layout of a house. I've seen some posts where it was said that the population was 36-40 (in the exhib it says they were designed for 25). But if there were 8 cubies, that's 16 out of the way already. A photo of what looks like half a dorm in the 80s shows 10 beds. So what's all this about "little dorm"? Obviously there's got to be common rooms and acres of baths, but even so, I couldn't guess what all that space was used for.

My estimation of the architecture of the school as a whole hasn't diminished, not that I'm qualified to comment, but I wouldn't be surprised if in years to come it's regretted that it wasn't kept in it's entirety, there can't be many places with a complete design realised so perfectly. I was so pleased to discover Mary Lynch 's pics casually featuring the chapel (is Tesco's really an improvement?) and the dream-like "A view from the Wardrobe Room in 6s" with the school block looming behind 3s and 4s.

[Jo]

The houses had three floors. At the back of each, on ground, first and second floors respectively, were the dayroom, lower (junior) dorm, and upper (senior) dorm/cubies. On the first floor there was the house mistress's bedroom, and at the front of the house the wardrobe and airing rooms. On the second floor was the maid's room (which by then was really a spare room for any guests or family that the housemistress might occasionally invite), and at the front above the wardrobe room and airing rooms respectively were little dorm, which slept about 3 (possibly 4?) people, and the box room, which I think slept 1 or 2.

Before the cubies were installed (around 1968, I think), upper dorm was one long dorm like lower dorm, and accommodated 16-18 people. Therefore being in little dorm or the box room, with only a couple of other people, was a privilege reserved for the sixth form. When the cubies were complete, they were really better than little dorm and the box room, as you only had to share with one other person, so little dorm and the box room were allocated to fourth formers who had just moved upstairs from lower dorm.

If I remember correctly, lower dorm accommodated 18, cubies 16, and little dorm/box room about 4, so the total capacity was about 38 girls. I think 5's numbers in my time only went up to 37, although I believe Jude's sig says her number was 38 (this was just after I left).

As for "acres of baths".....hahahahaha. There was one bathroom on each floor, each with four wash cubicles and three bath cubicles, covered only with ill-fitting curtains. The there were two toilets on each floor.

Generally speaking - though it depended on the strictness of the housemistress - we were not supposed to go upstairs during the day, not on weekdays at least. So we spent our time in house in the dayroom or, once in the sixth form, in our studies. The LVI study was at the very back of the house behind the dayroom, and the UVI study was at the front of the house just inside the front door. There might be around 10 in the sixth form, which meant that up to 27 first to fifth formers shared the one dayroom.

Other rooms on the ground floor were the house mistress's sitting room, the kitchen, the cloakroom and four loos.

It's scary that I can recall the layout in such minute detail 33 years later

[englishangel]

Jo, Jo, you forgot the tuck room, at the back of the dayroom on the other side from the Lower Sixth study/music room. I bet you could draw a plan (I certainly could), and then you would realise about the tuck room.

[Jo]

I didn't forget the tuck room, it just somehow didn't seem to be big enough to be relevant I also didn't mention the scullery (I think it was called?) behind the kitchen. That probably is every room in the house mentioned now, apart from broom cupboards and the cellar!

[lonely_wolf]

Great stuff Jo, I believe the UVI study featured on my itinerary. No news of the doors from anyone though, a mystery!

I wonder if the layout could have been different in 6s in Mary's time, or perhaps it's a slip - the photo she calls "A view from the wardrobe room" was clearly taken from the top floor (middle window).

Been trying to work out which cubie I saw . If you looked out of the window there was a fireplace on your right, which is puzzling since it was originally 1 big dorm, I'd expect the fireplace to be on an outside wall. I wonder if it's possible they had the box room, can't quite work out which bit of the front that would have been.

[midget]

It's scary that I can recall the layout in such minute detail 33 years later

It's even more scaryafter56 years!
Originally, before the introduction of luxuries like cubies, there were 36 prisoners in each house. There were 2 fireplaces facing each other in the middle of the long walls of dayroom, upper dorm and lower dorm. Certainly in 3s they were not junior and senior dorms, but mixed. I never knew the dorm fires to be lit, but if we had a particularly bad run of weather, the dayroom fires were lit at weekends, and also when we had a major food poisoning outbreak, with most of the senior houses off school.
I never dicovered the rationale behind the allocation of the 3-bedded room, except that I was in it for about a week, I think when I was in the UV. The other 2 were several years below me, Gillian Miles, and her friend Christine. Gillian was in there because she had something wrong with her nose, and made so much noise snoring that she kept the other 15 in her dorm awake. I was told to wake her when I went to bed, and hope that I got to sleep before she did.HAHAHA. After a week my bed was moved into the fireplace space in the main dorm (no front curtain for privacy). The single room was for the most senior doing Oxbridge exams, so I got it for the lasy term.

When I first went to CH there were no washbasin cubicles in the battrooms,just the 3 baths. The basins were added in abot 1949-1950 I think.

[Vonny]

I think things must have changed slightly over the years with regard to what each room was used for. Certainly in the 80's in 2's the housemistresses flat/room was next to the airing cupboard immediately on the right at the top of the first flight of stairs. Wardrobe room was also on the 1st flor next to the stairs but on the left.
Immediately above wardrobe room on the 2nd floor was a bedroom which (I think) was used by the house captain.

[Jo]

Every house was identical (except the opposite sides of the square were mirror images of each other). Mary's photo was either taken from the 1st floor, or if it was taken from the 2nd then it has the wrong caption. The wardrobe room was definitely on the first floor in those days.

Lonely_wolf, I said in an earlier posting the back doors have been removed, and possibly part of the side that included the kitchen and cloakroom, I can't just remember now from my last visit. It all looks seamless but there was definitely a piece on the side with the kitchen/scullery, and door to the outside, and then behind that the cloakroom/loos, with another door to the outside. I don't know how they've done it, but there is no evidence now that they ever existed.

Midget - gosh, no washbasins, what did you do? Was that still the era of washstands/jugs/basins in the dorms? I remember reading about the privacy curtains in one of the books - either Audrey's or Louie's - but neither dorm had them when I first started. I suppose if you got washed in dorm it was a different matter - you really did need some privacy.

Vonny, they changed the housemistress's accommodation during my last year - so 1975 - a much needed development in my view to try and attract a better standard of staff. I'm trying to picture it as 2's was a mirror image of 5's, but what you describe is how it would have been after the alterations. The whole front of the house on the first floor became the housemistress's flat, with the old airing room as a bedroom/bathroom, and the old wardrobe room as sitting room and kitchenette. The old housemistress's bedroom became a reduced wardrobe/airing room combined. I'm not sure if the flat was finished before I left, or whether I only saw it completed when I came back the following year to visit some friends. It was certainly a big improvement. I assume the housemistress still kept her sitting room on the ground floor, perhaps more as a day office?

The bedroom on the 2nd floor above the (new) wardrobe room was what used to be called the maid's room (I gather years ago, when more meals were taken in house, the houses were called wards, and the house mistresses were matrons, there actually was a live-in maid). In my day I think most housemistresses kept it as a spare bedroom, but I guess over the years some of them gave it up as another single room for the girls. I'm interested that you refer to "house captain", Vonny. Was that was the house representative role morphed into at some point? Monitresses were abolished in 1974 and all UVI automatically got their green aprons, but one person was appointed as house rep, which I suppose really was house captain in all but name. I was 5's first house rep, but I only ever had a cubey, though I think as we were not up to full numbers I had one to myself for a while.

Oh goodness, I remember it all almost as if it was yesterday, and yet at the same time it could be a million years ago.

[Vonny]

The old housemistress's bedroom became a reduced wardrobe/airing room combined. ....... I assume the housemistress still kept her sitting room on the ground floor, perhaps more as a day office?

The airing cupboard we had in 2's was pretty small - it was effectively a walk in cupboard. Certainly in 2's the housemistress (Laurie) did not have a room downstairs. The sixth formers had the room on the left of the fron door and the room on the left just past the stairs was a tv room and was also used by Mrs Ferris who was the lady who used to help out/make sure you had a uniform that fitted etc.

I'm interested that you refer to "house captain", Vonny. Was that was the house representative role morphed into at some point?

Erm - I'm doubting what I wrote since I read what you have written. I initially thought we had house captains but did we? We certainly did at Horsham. Maybe that bedroom was used by a monitress and that's what I was thinking of.

[Ajarn Philip]

It must have been both interesting and confusing for everyone around that time, Vonny. Unfortunately I missed it by a good decade.

[Vonny]

It must have been both interesting and confusing for everyone around that time, Vonny.

Yes it was. I'm glad to have experienced both Hertford & Horsham but if I could do it all again I'd rather it was at Horsham!

[Alexandra Thrift]

This is quite a lovely thread ( thanks to lonely wolf and all contributors).

Sophie Stone's older sister (and I agree with the earlier date of 1968) was Julie ,and my friend ( as was lovely Shelagh Regester who was also in Fours...both of them were a year below me ). Were either Julie or Sophie R.A.F presentees ? I know that their Dad was a (believe it or not) one-eyed airline Pilot ( I believe he wore a patch over his blind eye) , which Julie thought was hilarious.

Sophie had very blond,frizzy hair and Julie had dark frizzy hair.

[Alexandra Thrift]

Page one of the Hertford Memories topic listing. "Hertford PIC 1" posted January 2006. The "R.A.F" girl presentees visiting Horsham. In the centre of the photo with blond plaits ,Sophie Stones.

[englishangel]

...and both Shelagh and Julie are in the mons photo from 1972.