All Change Miss Tucker?

[Angela Woodford]

I really would be interested to learn about the changes Miss Tucker must have made when she took over as Headmistress after DR.

Or did she?

Did she just tread water with the same routines with the knowledge that the merger was in sight? I don't know quite how - but I gathered at the time that Miss Tucker was not in favour of co-education.

It must have been really strange for her, coming to a School whose long established attitudes hadn't changed in decades! I wonder if she has written her own "Half To Remember"?

Do any girls of the time have memories? I know that I would have been a bit spooked at coming back to School to find Someone Else in that splendid house!

[fra828]

If you look at 'The New Old Blue' section in General CH, you will see a few comments on this subject !

[six5]

Had tea with Mr Upton a few years ago - bless him - and he told me how incredibly awkward the old guard (the three bears?) made it for her to change anything. She did let us introduce school dances (amyone remember the Haileybury band in the gym?) and school plays, though.

[Angela Woodford]

Robin, it's you; how nice!

Interesting to hear you use that expression "The Three Bears". The first time I heard this was when I discovered I was working with a girl who turned out to have been at Hertford - quite a bit younger than me, obviously. (I'd wondered why we seemed to get along so well...) She explained that Miss Morrison had chummed up with that fearsome twosome the Misses Jukes and Wilson. I was amazed.

I'm trying hard to imagine the Haileybury band in the gym. How much more of a suitably crowded ambiance that would have created, as opposed to the School Hall! I suppose by then, you were allowed home clothes? Only thing... the gym did have a particularly characteristic smell. A smell that couldn't possibly have contributed to Romance.

I hear in my mind's ear, the furious indignation of Nellie, as girls with shoes, not of the plimsoll persuasion, trample on her piles of mats, and imperil the surface of the gym floor, on which sacred surface outdoor shoes are strictly forbidden. Suppose a gang of boys become overexcited and start swinging across the dance floor - on the ropes? Or even breaks into the swimming pool next door?

I do hope she never, never got to hear of this. Nellie, long gone by then!

Details, please, Robin, more details from the teatime confidences of Mr Upton!

[su523]

that expression "The Three Bears". The first time I heard this was when I discovered I was working with a girl who turned out to have been at Hertford - quite a bit younger than me, obviously. (I'd wondered why we seemed to get along so well...) She explained that Miss Morrison had chummed up with that fearsome twosome the Misses Jukes and Wilson. I was amazed.

I'm amazed you're amazed! I remember them going around as a trio, in my recollection sometimes known as the Lion (Miss Jukes, with her mane of hair), the Witch (Miss Wilson, with her ... um ... long nose) and the Wardrobe (Miss Morrison and her, well, herself). Don't tell me I'm making this all up?

Su

[Angela Woodford]

Er... amazed you're amazed I'm amazed, Su!

There was Jukes-and-Wilson in (think it was) End House. Miss Morrison had her accommodation first floor Red House. I honestly don't remember her making the deadly duo a threesome - I don't!

Miss Jukes had a strict neat short side-parted perm. I used to gaze at it during 'A' level Cookerwy Theowy, as she berated me for carelessness and lack of factual content in my essays, and wonder... why? Why? Who would want that perm? That "trim"? (Vidal Sassoon had revolutionised Hair and I had absorbed, blissfully, his comments in the Art School copy of Vogue Magazine.) You couldn't call that hair a mane.

Lion, Witch and Wardrobe. Hmmm. I've just gained a new HOGOF friend - the wonderful Charis Dunn, to whom I've just heard, Miss Wilson was hideously discouraging during a Geography lesson. A witchy throwaway put-down, most definitely!

[MKM]

I thought (at the time) that DR was using her forthcoming retirement as an excuse to avoid any changes in the last few years. But I was a discontented teenager and wanted everything to be different. There must have been plenty of scope for Miss Tucker, but I left at the same time as DR, and didn't witness any changes.

But on my first returning visit to CH I heard that Miss Tucker actually went off duty. I felt quite scared at the thought of the school drifting, leaderless, for a few hours on a Sunday evening. I couldn't imagine DR ever being unavailable.

[Liz60]

My memories of Miss Tucker's first year are actually quite positive: she seemed relatively human and had some knowledge of the Outside World! Scary, huh? Get this: shortly after her arrival she invited all of us prefects together with the Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (I remember them as a threesome but maybe they had banded together to repel all newcomers At The Top) to review the School Rules. She more or less threw the entire book out with, would you believe, their approval, and introduced some basic common sense ones in their place!!! I thought it was quite a Smart Move getting them involved...

Another good thing I remember was that she treated us prefects (more or less) as adults; when the Steward Miss Whatever-her-name-was complained to her that she could hear us up and about in the flat above as late as 9.45pm, she was gently told that she (Miss T) thought we were probably old enough to fix our own bedtime and that she wasn't to worry!!

On another occasion I was caught by the afore-mentioned trio playing the piano in the TV room during prep time and duly reported to Miss T, eliciting a summons the next day. I had my excuse/reason all ready but I didn't need one: she merely invited me to use her piano during prep so that I "wouldn't be disturbed"! Good egg, I thought.

Yes, Miss T was a definite improvement on her predecessor in lots of ways - from the point of view of a "senior", anyway. She even used to go off to London once a week to sing in the Bach Choir - goodness knows who she left in charge...