Welcome to the unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum - for discussing everything CH/Old Blue related. All pupils, parents, families, staff, Old Blues and anyone else related to CH are welcome to browse the boards, register and contribute.
Before I started at CH I had lived in childrens homes from the age of about two years old
I don't think I told anybody about this .... nowhere near as scarey as the adults who were in charge of my previous institution).
Oh Alex. I find it really strange to think now how little we all knew about each other. The institutionalism of Hertford seemed to pack so much routine into each day that - well, speaking for myself, I never really considered that others might have come from a variety of backgrounds that they never spoke about. Sorry, I haven't put that so well.
I came from a slightly unusual set-up, but came to CH as a loved precious child of much older parents. Compared to home, CH seemed terribly grim! Although we had so little privacy, the main thing that comes back to me is how lonely I felt - and how scruffy and overweight I looked!
But then, away from the normal world, we did find a lot to laugh about in an original and eccentric way completely lacking in my own children. They seem very conformist to me! But they are "normal" and streetwise as I never was. Somewhere on the Forum there's a topic called something like "What would you be like if you'd gone to an ordinary comprehensive?"
Love
Munch
I agree with you Munch.
I know that some of my friends in 2's had widowed mothers and such, but outside t6hat my experience was of poor two parent families, and I didn't understand much more about the rest of the world when I left.
"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
Getting back to DR, but also following on from the above, she was determined that we would not know about other girls' backgrounds unless they were happy to tell. We did not know how much anyone's parents paid towards fees, we did not know whether the school paid everything even their pocket money. In this she was successful. At school, I felt we really were all equal.
Speaking personally, I wasn't that curious about others home life. I was the daughter of an OB C of E cleric, a definition of poverty in many eyes! I had a home life rich in other ways. I did not feel deprived, I had been brought up in the hope that I would go to CH from the time I was small. Boarding was not a surprise for me in that way.
Angela Woodford wrote:Oh Alex. I find it really strange to think now how little we all knew about each other. The institutionalism of Hertford seemed to pack so much routine into each day that - well, speaking for myself, I never really considered that others might have come from a variety of backgrounds that they never spoke about. Sorry, I haven't put that so well.
Hi Munch
You've put it far better than I was able to. I pm'd Alex because, no matter how hard I tried and how many times I deleted and rewrote, I was unable to adequately express what I wanted to say.
Angela Woodford wrote:Although we had so little privacy, the main thing that comes back to me is how lonely I felt - and how scruffy and overweight I looked!
Me too! We lived in a council flat, and all the kids played, travelled to and from school, etc in a large group. The Mums similarly had their support group. Suddenly I was at CH, feeling poor, common, fat and lonely - definitley not the equal of my peers.
Angela Woodford wrote:But then, away from the normal world, we did find a lot to laugh about in an original and eccentric way completely lacking in my own children. They seem very conformist to me! But they are "normal" and streetwise as I never was.
Love
Munch
Hmmm - if only I could describe my offspring as normal and conformist. Son appears off plane looking like a cockatoo 'Chill Mumsy, surf was up and I didn't have time to brush my hair before I got on the plane', and my daughter has a three page spread in Australian Ute Magazine. She's the Ute Chick of the Month (drives a 5L monster with 4 exhaust pipes and has the audacity to complain about the price of fuel).
Combining replies:
Liz! I'm horrified! I can't remember any more of The Pied Piper than the very next line which is, I believe, a repeat of
T'was a pity.
I can do better with Hiawatha, and managed to find a copy of the entire poem in a secondhand book shop a year or so ago.
Holly burning continued for at least four years after you left Katharine, and I had completely forgotten about it.
Isn't it strange. DR was so desperate that we didn't know each others backgrounds that we never realised that most of us were in (if not the same at least) similar boats.
My children all know each others backgrounds, we are (relatively) comfortable, one of their friends lives in a big detached house in a very select area, one lives in a council house with his single Mum who is a nurse, and one lives with his comfortably off single Mum and spends the summer holidays in LA with his rich Dad. They don't care, they are friends.
"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
To bring this subject back to the original intention of the thread, I give below what I intend (fingers crossed, and I will need lots of Rescue Remedy. beforehand..!!) as my eulogy at the funeral on Thursday.
Anyone who attends the funeral and who can sing will be invited to sit (unrobed) in the choir stalls. There will be at least one CH item (The Foundation Hymn), plus possibly humming along to Jean Taverner's 'Hertford Grace' as the coffin is lifted and turned......
I'm sorry to be blowing the gaff to those of you who will be attending the funeral (Munch, Alex and others?) but this is how I feel at the moment. And curiously it all seems to resonate with e.g. the discussion that she (DRW) did not encourage people from seriously disadvantaged backgrounds to share their experiences with their peers unless they wished to. There was a reservation which, nonetheless, hid a kindness which not all girls experienced when they were at Hertford under her tenure.
"This is my personal appreciation of the person who you will have known probably either as ‘Miss West’, or ‘DR’, or ‘Ruth’, or ‘Puck’ – depending into which part of her 94 years of life you fitted (and there may have been other names by which you knew her!). I did think that 94 was not a bad innings for a cricketer – and though I regret she did not make her Century I realized that, in the last months or so, she herself was ready to knock off the bails, return to the Pavilion and hang up her bat.
I first met ‘Miss West’ almost fifty years ago when as a nine year old I attended the entrance examinations for Christ’s Hospital Girls’ School. It was a scary occasion, and there was no doubting the gravity, importance and authority of the lady who was examining us. Instantly I was in awe of her – but that is not to say that she did not deal with us little girls in a kind way. In fact I have seen it written that she had a particular affinity with young children and I can attest to the Ruth who, as an 80 year old, raided Woolworths in Seaford to buy anything possible which was football-related, to send to a young boy in Austria; and to the Ruth who, at 90 years old, told me how she had rejoiced at the caperings of a great-nephew who had visited her in her room in the Nursing Home.
I should make it clear that this address is not about DR West, Headmistress of Christ’s Hospital Girls’ School – I hope that Christ’s Hospital itself will soon have the opportunity to more formally commemorate her outstanding contribution to the Foundation both during and since her 30 year tenure as Headmistress at Hertford. This is my personal appreciation of the ‘human being’ that I was privileged to find, later, behind the somewhat reserved and authoritative persona of the Headmistress of whom I was in so much awe when I was a schoolgirl.
It took me some time, however, to lose that sense of awe. I recall returning from work one day in my early 20’s to find that she had telephoned and left a message for me to call her back. I didn’t know why she wanted to speak to me, and I was terrified! I remember sitting on the stairs, summoning up the courage to make the telephone call and, in my head, rehearsing the first few exchanges of the conversation. When I did have enough courage, and dialed the number and she answered – I found that, unbidden, my mouth replaying both sides of those imagined exchanges as if from a tape. What an idiot! She never mentioned it –but I like to think that if we had discussed it later in life, she would have said that she had been amused.
As did many Old Girls from Hertford, in due course I called upon her in the bungalow in Alfriston, in her so-called retirement. I found her not only busy with all the concerns with which she had filled her life after CH - but also warm, friendly, obviously pleased to see me, with a clear recollection of who I had been at the school and with a deep interest in what I was doing with my life. She even took an opportunity to teach me how to cook ginger biscuits, and gave me the recipe for a Recipe Book which I was at the time compiling for my Church. As she did with so many other Old Girls, she encouraged me to keep in touch with her, and I did so - but it was after I took over the Chairing of the Old Girls’ Association in the late 1980’s that our paths began to cross more frequently.
I used to visit her often in Smugglers’ Close (and latterly in Chyngton Rise) and over the years I had the privilege of spending quite a lot of time in her company, including taking her to both the 80th and 90th birthday parties which we arranged for her. As I got to know Ruth better, I found a self-possessed but also curiously self-effacing woman – the antithesis of the awesome figure of authority who had dominated my formative years. I found that she led a simple life, had no interest either in acquiring personal possessions, or in high fashion (as we saw with the borrowed hat which she wore when Helen brought her to Horsham to see The Queen in 2004!). However I soon came to realise that she was a very kind person and that she had an unending supply of quiet and thoughtful generosity for those around her. I know that she showed exceptional generosity and kindness to at least one girl after her retirement from CH; I have heard of her buying personal clothes secretly for other girls (where their family circumstances did not allow the acquisition of an appropriate wardrobe for their years). I myself was astonished (but delighted) to receive a totally unexpected bouquet of flowers to thank me for arranging one of her 80th birthday parties.
As the years passed and I got to know her as a friend, I discovered that while she had engendered in us (her CH pupils) the expected ethos of duty and service, in fact in her own retirement she had lived out those expectations for herself. I found her to be leading a life of selfless service to others, which included - amongst more public service - service to this, her Parish Church; the local Cricket Club (we always knew that Cricket was her passion!) and the Women’s Institute. I have no doubt that, in these arenas and on occasion, she may have come over to some of you as ‘bossy’ – but her directness and bluntness were, I am sure, born of a characteristic clarity of thinking through which she could see what it was she wanted to achieve, and what was the most efficient method of doing so. She never dissembled, and I am sure that she never intended any offence; quite simply, she always said what she thought - and that was the end of the matter.
In fact, I believe that her integrity and honesty were above reproach – even if sometimes painful if you were on the receiving end. I recall my last ‘conversational’ visit with her early last month (on my next visit, she was not really able to communicate). Seeing that she was tiring, I asked ‘Have you had enough of me?’ and she replied quite forcefully : ‘YES’. So I gathered up my things and left, but without offence because, as ever, one always knew where one stood with her.
You who are here today are testimony to the respect and affection in which she was held, and you are representative of the many others over whose lives she had such an influence over 94 years. If someone had told me, when I first met her those 50 years ago, that I would be speaking at her funeral, I would have run a mile. But fortunately they didn’t – and as it now happens I am honoured and privileged to have had the opportunity to talk today about Ruth West, the person I came to know and love, and who I now will remember always with the deepest of affection. I pray that she will rest in the peace which she deserves."
I hope that readers on the Forum (particularly on this thread) will not find this too mawkish!
I think you have done a great job there Kerren. I don't think I knew she was Ruth, not Dorothy. I wish you all the best for Thursday, I'll be with you in spirit.
kerrensimmonds wrote:To bring this subject back to the original intention of the thread, I give below what I intend (fingers crossed, and I will need lots of Rescue Remedy. beforehand..!!) as my eulogy at the funeral on Thursday.
Anyone who attends the funeral and who can sing will be invited to sit (unrobed) in the choir stalls. There will be at least one CH item (The Foundation Hymn), plus possibly humming along to Jean Taverner's 'Hertford Grace' as the coffin is lifted and turned......
I'm sorry to be blowing the gaff to those of you who will be attending the funeral (Munch, Alex and others?) but this is how I feel at the moment. And curiously it all seems to resonate with e.g. the discussion that she (DRW) did not encourage people from seriously disadvantaged backgrounds to share their experiences with their peers unless they wished to. There was a reservation which, nonetheless, hid a kindness which not all girls experienced when they were at Hertford under her tenure.
"This is my personal appreciation of the person who you will have known probably either as ‘Miss West’, or ‘DR’, or ‘Ruth’, or ‘Puck’ – depending into which part of her 94 years of life you fitted (and there may have been other names by which you knew her!). I did think that 94 was not a bad innings for a cricketer – and though I regret she did not make her Century I realized that, in the last months or so, she herself was ready to knock off the bails, return to the Pavilion and hang up her bat.
I first met ‘Miss West’ almost fifty years ago when as a nine year old I attended the entrance examinations for Christ’s Hospital Girls’ School. It was a scary occasion, and there was no doubting the gravity, importance and authority of the lady who was examining us. Instantly I was in awe of her – but that is not to say that she did not deal with us little girls in a kind way. In fact I have seen it written that she had a particular affinity with young children and I can attest to the Ruth who, as an 80 year old, raided Woolworths in Seaford to buy anything possible which was football-related, to send to a young boy in Austria; and to the Ruth who, at 90 years old, told me how she had rejoiced at the caperings of a great-nephew who had visited her in her room in the Nursing Home.
I should make it clear that this address is not about DR West, Headmistress of Christ’s Hospital Girls’ School – I hope that Christ’s Hospital itself will soon have the opportunity to more formally commemorate her outstanding contribution to the Foundation both during and since her 30 year tenure as Headmistress at Hertford. This is my personal appreciation of the ‘human being’ that I was privileged to find, later, behind the somewhat reserved and authoritative persona of the Headmistress of whom I was in so much awe when I was a schoolgirl.
It took me some time, however, to lose that sense of awe. I recall returning from work one day in my early 20’s to find that she had telephoned and left a message for me to call her back. I didn’t know why she wanted to speak to me, and I was terrified! I remember sitting on the stairs, summoning up the courage to make the telephone call and, in my head, rehearsing the first few exchanges of the conversation. When I did have enough courage, and dialed the number and she answered – I found that, unbidden, my mouth replaying both sides of those imagined exchanges as if from a tape. What an idiot! She never mentioned it –but I like to think that if we had discussed it later in life, she would have said that she had been amused.
As did many Old Girls from Hertford, in due course I called upon her in the bungalow in Alfriston, in her so-called retirement. I found her not only busy with all the concerns with which she had filled her life after CH - but also warm, friendly, obviously pleased to see me, with a clear recollection of who I had been at the school and with a deep interest in what I was doing with my life. She even took an opportunity to teach me how to cook ginger biscuits, and gave me the recipe for a Recipe Book which I was at the time compiling for my Church. As she did with so many other Old Girls, she encouraged me to keep in touch with her, and I did so - but it was after I took over the Chairing of the Old Girls’ Association in the late 1980’s that our paths began to cross more frequently.
I used to visit her often in Smugglers’ Close (and latterly in Chyngton Rise) and over the years I had the privilege of spending quite a lot of time in her company, including taking her to both the 80th and 90th birthday parties which we arranged for her. As I got to know Ruth better, I found a self-possessed but also curiously self-effacing woman – the antithesis of the awesome figure of authority who had dominated my formative years. I found that she led a simple life, had no interest either in acquiring personal possessions, or in high fashion (as we saw with the borrowed hat which she wore when Helen brought her to Horsham to see The Queen in 2004!). However I soon came to realise that she was a very kind person and that she had an unending supply of quiet and thoughtful generosity for those around her. I know that she showed exceptional generosity and kindness to at least one girl after her retirement from CH; I have heard of her buying personal clothes secretly for other girls (where their family circumstances did not allow the acquisition of an appropriate wardrobe for their years). I myself was astonished (but delighted) to receive a totally unexpected bouquet of flowers to thank me for arranging one of her 80th birthday parties.
As the years passed and I got to know her as a friend, I discovered that while she had engendered in us (her CH pupils) the expected ethos of duty and service, in fact in her own retirement she had lived out those expectations for herself. I found her to be leading a life of selfless service to others, which included - amongst more public service - service to this, her Parish Church; the local Cricket Club (we always knew that Cricket was her passion!) and the Women’s Institute. I have no doubt that, in these arenas and on occasion, she may have come over to some of you as ‘bossy’ – but her directness and bluntness were, I am sure, born of a characteristic clarity of thinking through which she could see what it was she wanted to achieve, and what was the most efficient method of doing so. She never dissembled, and I am sure that she never intended any offence; quite simply, she always said what she thought - and that was the end of the matter.
In fact, I believe that her integrity and honesty were above reproach – even if sometimes painful if you were on the receiving end. I recall my last ‘conversational’ visit with her early last month (on my next visit, she was not really able to communicate). Seeing that she was tiring, I asked ‘Have you had enough of me?’ and she replied quite forcefully : ‘YES’. So I gathered up my things and left, but without offence because, as ever, one always knew where one stood with her.
You who are here today are testimony to the respect and affection in which she was held, and you are representative of the many others over whose lives she had such an influence over 94 years. If someone had told me, when I first met her those 50 years ago, that I would be speaking at her funeral, I would have run a mile. But fortunately they didn’t – and as it now happens I am honoured and privileged to have had the opportunity to talk today about Ruth West, the person I came to know and love, and who I now will remember always with the deepest of affection. I pray that she will rest in the peace which she deserves."
I hope that readers on the Forum (particularly on this thread) will not find this too mawkish!
Kerren
As a Horsham boy I never knew or met Miss West but I think that is a worthy eulogy and from what I've seen on this forum captures the essence of her personality very well indeed.
Wow! Thank you folks (both Hertford and Horsham....) for your support. Keep the positive vibes going until the end of the day on Thursday! I am truly grateful for your endorsement of what it is I have to say on the day. Fingers crossed that I can do it clearly and without blubbing!
How supportive is this Forum. Thank you Julian et al....
PS folks. The funeral starts at 11.00 on Thursday 11th (UK time) after which the family and 'yours truly' adjourns to the crematorium. AArrgh. By the time we get back (an hour or so later...) I fully expect that people will have had their sandwiches at the wake in 'The Smugglers' Inn' and may have bogged off. So hang in there, friends, and wait for my return!
It will be of enormous support to know that people are thinking of us at that time, even if they cannot actually be there.
