Margaret Wilson, RIP

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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Vonny
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

Post by Vonny »

Fatless sponge is the one I'l never forget - mine didn't rise because I didn't whisk it enough :lol: The look on Miss Jukes face :shock: And I went on to do cookery for O Level :lol:
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

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Did you pass? And do you still use that recipe....?
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

Post by Vonny »

I've never made one since!!!

Yes I did pass - I got a B. There were only 3 of us do it for O level. Triple cookery Thursday mornings - remember it well as I used to dread the lesson so much I would feel sick (and often be sick) before the lesson!
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

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Well done on passing, and getting a 'B' as well. However, poor Betty Jukes would be mortified to learn that you feared Cookery so much! I still find it strange that for me our teachers morphed into normal human beings once I had left. As far as I am concerned, DRW is a case in point, but I got to know Jean Morrison and am also very fond now of Betty Jukes and Sybil Radley (nee Dolley) - who taught me French - as well as others who taught me in the junior school, like Joy Holmes and Judith Heaven (now Hepper) and Beryl Holloway (now Jenkins) - as well as Rosemary Esch (also an OG, like Joy Holmes, and now Whiting). And in later life I was delighted to be reunited with Jill Burke (nee Westhorpe) who taught us PE and games in my last two years, after Miss Park. I had been close to her in my last two years at School and even contemplated going into PE teaching, as she had done (she was only a couple or so years older than us). Her memories, when retold 40 years later, made the hairs on my neck stand up - sadly she died last year of an untimely heart attack.
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

Post by midget »

I thought everybody feared Miss Jukes!
Maureen Harding (3s) started A level maths, but was so scared of Miss Mitchell that she asked DR if she could change to another subject (we had to do 3) and couldn't think what to do with English and History. she eventually decided to do cookery, but was almost as scared of Miss Jukes.
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

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Blimey Midget.. and that's before my time - when Betty Jukes must have been quite 'new'! How can she have been fearful as a young woman? The mind boggles.....
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

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kerrensimmonds wrote: However, poor Betty Jukes would be mortified to learn that you feared Cookery so much!
Kerren, Kerren, with every respect...

I feel absolutely convinced that Miss Jukes knew that I feared and dreaded lessons with her! Like Vonny, I was occasionally sick before those three hour Cookery sessions and a trembling wreck after them :roll: . Why did she say such blunt and hurtful things? I think she honestly thought that she'd get me to shape up and become a fast practical and efficient worker that way... It was a huge mistake to do 'A' level Home Economics. But I couldn't think what else to take with English and French!

I'd actually thought that Miss Jukes was a very nice woman. She took us for Science on Saturday mornings in the 111 Form. How I remember how quickly she sprang into action when Alison Stilliard set fire to her lovely blonde hair with a Bunsen Burner! The yellow Science exercise book - the luminous and non-luminous flames - the metal ball in that stand thing that proved that it expanded on heating and contracted on cooling. And how we all shrieked when the cooled ball crashed onto the mistress's desk! Wonderful.
"Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again.""
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

Post by Angela Woodford »

Angela Woodford wrote:
kerrensimmonds wrote: However, poor Betty Jukes would be mortified to learn that you feared Cookery so much!
Kerren, Kerren, with every respect...

I feel absolutely convinced that Miss Jukes knew that I feared and dreaded lessons with her! Like Vonny, I was occasionally sick before those three hour Cookery sessions and a trembling wreck after them :roll: . Why did she say such blunt and hurtful things? I think she honestly thought that she'd get me to shape up and become a fast practical and efficient worker that way... It was a huge mistake to do 'A' level Home Economics. But I couldn't think what else to take with English and French!

Remember music mistress Mrs Fiddaman? I had a music lesson before triple Cookery. Mrs Fiddaman switched the time - she said it was hopeless to try to teach music before a girl was due to encounter Miss Jukes; such was the nervous agitation brought on by the prospect of the Cookery School.

I'd actually thought that Miss Jukes was a very nice woman. She took us for Science on Saturday mornings in the 111 Form. How I remember how quickly she sprang into action when Alison Stilliard set fire to her lovely blonde hair with a Bunsen Burner! The yellow Science exercise book - the luminous and non-luminous flames - the metal ball in that stand thing that proved that it expanded on heating and contracted on cooling. And how we all shrieked when the cooled ball crashed onto the mistress's desk! Wonderful.
"Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again.""
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

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****Edited - dreaded double post!!****
Last edited by Vonny on Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

Post by Vonny »

Angela Woodford wrote: I feel absolutely convinced that Miss Jukes knew that I feared and dreaded lessons with her! Like Vonny, I was occasionally sick before those three hour Cookery sessions and a trembling wreck after them :roll: . Why did she say such blunt and hurtful things?
I'm not surprised I wasn't the only one :lol:
The fatless sponge episode happened in a normal lesson (not the O level class) she seemd to feel the need to show me up in front of the whole class. I can honestly still see the look on her face to this day :shock: The second year of the O level course we had moved to Horsham and I then had Miss Hartnett (who later became Mrs Robinson). WHAT A CONTRAST!!!
Last edited by Vonny on Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

Post by Jo »

I actually dug out my school cookery book this afternoon and made my mum some ginger biscuits. We used little notebooks, much smaller than our normal exercise books for some reason. Mine is now coverless and some of the recipes have faded completely, but in addition to the ones I had previously remembered I found apple pie and bacon & egg pie (no-one used the term "quiche" in those days but that's basically what it was).

Now, if only I could find my shortbread recipe - adapted over the years until I thought I'd got it right, but I so rarely bake these days that I can't find it. :cry:
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

Post by kerrensimmonds »

OOh dear. What an emotional evening. I was looking for my 1990's Daily Mail Jocelyn Dimbleby steadfast and used ever since Christmas recipes (found them eventually on the bookstand in the kitchen, not put away after last year...). In the process I dismantled my cookery bookshelf including all the newspaper cutouts over 40 years or more. I found :
a) 'Recipes of the World' clearly done while I was at school - a neat folder of pasted in recipes
b) A letter from my mum to Betty Jukes, dated April 5th 1965, concerning my 'Design for Living' application towards the D of E Award (and ticked off 'BJ') describing a three course meal which I had prepared, cooked and served for five, including laying the table (which apparently I did to perfection.....I was 17). The meal was fresh fruit juice or tomato juice (what a challenge - tho I don't suppose it came from a can or a carton in those days!), curried beef with rice and creamed potatoes (carbohydrates?!) and jelly fruit flan with fresh cream (wonderful......??). Seeing my mum's writing gave me quite a jolt
c) My Lower VA, September 1962, 'Cookery Notes' (yes Jo, it's a small thin orange exercise book). Starts with vegetable broth (September 25th) and goes through Rock Cakes, Queen Cakes, Apple Pie, Sausage Rolls, Ginger Nuts, Macaroni Cheese, Sponge Cakes, Victoria Cakes - including a page headed 'Christmas' with nothing written on it!
Off to lie down in a darkened room again.....
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

Post by Angela Woodford »

I wish now that Miss Jukes had a thread of her own.

For 'A' level Cookery, we had a hardback book for recipes. I hadn't done 'O' level Cookery, so Deirdre Hobbs kindly copied out all the 'O' level recipes for me. I still have that book, and it still has the very faintest whiff of the Cookery School about it. A bit of ancient marge here, I think.

It reminds me of the sheer necessity of working as fast as I could - next to lists of ingredients for recipes are desperate scrawls reminding me of containers and utentials... White gown garment on. Soggy tea-towel tucked at waistline. Glasses misting up with steam and sheer terror.

collect first!
warm in hot water in sink
milk in lwb (little white bowl) for glaze
sift onto tin plate
greaseproof to cover during first rise

(Feeling slightly panicky just seeing these reminders...)

Here is Miss Jukes' recommendation for "A Four Course Meal" - a likely question for the Practical Exam.

1st course. Soup, hors d'oevres, melon, grapefruit, fruit juice, prawn cocktail.

2nd course. Fish or eggs. Pickled herring with lettuce and tomato, fillet of whiting stuffed rolled and coated with cheese sauce, convent eggs.

3rd course. Red meat or poultry. A joint eg sirloin or leg of lamb, chicken or duck. (Just noticed that Miss Jukes told us that "cabbage should be boiled for 20 mins, then mashed".)

4th course. Sweet, hot or cold or choice of both. Peach Rupert, Rich Cabinet Pudding, Honeycomb Mould, Pear Condé.

Always serve bread rolls, butter balls, coffee or lemonade.

OH! I'm back in 1970!

It must have been 1970 that a new nice young Home Economics mistress arrived. I can't remember her name. Miss Jukes once burst in on a session we were having with this poor young woman, scolding and berating her to an embarassing degree because the benches in the cookery school hadn't been scrubbed sufficiently clean. It was ghastly. Humiliating. I could only react with sympathy at witnessing somebody else get "blown up".
"Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again.""
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

Post by MaryB »

I've enjoyed this thread so much. WWWWiW and HDSummers are so much a part of my mental landscape, not to mention truncated spurs, drumlins and terminal moraines. I always loved physical geography, especially glaciation, maybe because the theory and the reality matched so perfectly, unlike most things in life.

My elder son is at Durham, and when I drive him up or back he now braces himself every time we cross a Yorkshire river as I chant "the Swale, the Ure, the Nidd, the Wharfe, the Aire, the Calder" - but definitely not the Don.
And what about the major products of the 100 most important towns in England, including pork pies in Melton Mowbray?

But Munch and everyone, can you have forgotten LOESS (x 3), and also the nightmare of the International Dateline (write short notes on 3 of the following....) for which you or Carolynn made me an explanation which for a short time - just long enough - made sense. There's an episode of The West Wing where they're flying back from the Philippines or somewhere and CJ tries to argue with the press corps about what time it is/should be... ("We've just had breakfast" "Yes but it should have been dinner") and gives up. Don't blame her at all.

This forum is an even more effective displacement activity than internet Scrabble. How am I ever going to get any work done now?
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Re: Margaret Wilson, RIP

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Hi ! Am new to this forum. I was at Hertford in late 60's to early 70's, in 8's like Thamesmudandbarges (tho not sure who you are, am thinking of 2 possible people!) Anyway getting back to the topic I was HOPELESS at geography and I also remember being told that Miss Wilson always gets everyone through O level, I scraped through with an E! I remember those river names too, though different ones: Frome, Stour, Avon, Test, Itchen. Does anyone remember early 70's power cuts, when we left lessons early cos of fading light? And we revised for exams by candlelight? Was doing mock O levels at this time and for some reason I got my best results ever! 6 passes out of 8.
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