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.
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....
Jude wrote:Vonny how could you!!! she was so small even the 1st years were taller. i bet she took it in good grace.
I don't remember her reaction but I'll bet she said what she always said to me - that I'd never pass my English O Level Bet she'd be more than surprised to learn that I went on to do English A Level - and passed!
Jude wrote:Going on to pets... I had a guinea pig with me at CH - looking back it actually amazes me that I ever got to school - My father insisted I wore my uiform all the way from home to school - everyone else was allowed home clothes... so I used to change just after the train had gone past Worthing (I lived in Angmering West Sussex) - I had 2 red suitacases, guinea pig in a travelling box, hockey stick, or squash/badminton raquets in a double press, I would arrive at Victoria Station, travel underground (if the mood took me) to Liverpool St and then get on the Train to Hertford East... My father put me on the train at about 9am... we weren't due back until 5pm....
I used to leave my luggage, and then visit the Art Gallery, Nelson's Column **** it was time to move to CH!
It was bad enough carting one suitcase back to CH let alone all that clobber!
I think I alsmot became a Bag Lady!! I ALWAYS forgot something so at the last moment it went into a plastic bag, that I hooked over the hockey stick or whatever.... no wonder my shoulders are broad and i was good at swimming!!! I was lifting weight before anyone thought of doing so!!!
Jude Comber (nee Kelynack) 5's 5.38 1975-1980 Herts. To Learn - read, to Know - write, to MASTER - Teach
I remember Susan Cottingham 'cos Liz arrived a year after me and joined the Lower Fourth. Yes,Susan,tall and dreamy....(a bit like Mrs Betterton in that way..dreamy I mean,not tall ). She and Liz ( the 6:30 who came after) had the specs in common! I think Susan organised " Sixes Tea"...I've never been and don't know if it still happens.
I wrote a long post all about Miss Mercer and it disappeared GRRR!
So ,again....briefly ( for Jude ,who asked who she was)...Miss Mercer was the most erudite and scholarly teacher I have ever come across. She always wore black so she wouldn't have to think what to wear in the morning, and conversed with her Father in Latin as a small child. She was educated at Oxford and the Sorbonne and mostly taught History and History of Art and sometimes taught Spanish,Russian, French, Latin and ...quite famously...logic ( I've got a "Logic" "O" level 'cos Miss Mercer suddenly taught us the whole syllabus in six weeks of the Lower Sixth and then we took the exam...we all got A grades even though we were really the "A" level history group!).She encouraged us to read the early scholars ...Bede, St Cuthbert, Augustine, Plato,Machiavelli,Boccacio etc...and was responsible for stocking the fabulous school library.
Girls used to joke that Miss Mercers students were "La creme de la creme" as in Miss Jean Brodie but I have honestly never come across a better or brighter teacher.To have a History lesson with Miss Mercer was to be transported back to the Middle Ages or whenever......Brilliant.
If she is still with us I would love to communicate if only to thank her (teenagers can be sooo ungrateful....I could be anyway )
OMG dreadful faux pas...just re-read some posts and realised my 6:30 predecessor wasn't Katharine but someone called Susan.
I do apologise.
That's probably worth a Disorder mark at least. For not paying attention.
(See how ALREADY I'm being norty, no wonder the disciplinarians found me such a rewarding object of attention, nearly always something there needing a good seeing-to.)
I'm off to groom my dogs. Might mutter a psalm under my breath by way of atonement.
Liz Jay wrote:OMG dreadful faux pas...just re-read some posts and realised my 6:30 predecessor wasn't Katharine but someone called Susan.
I do apologise.
That's probably worth a Disorder mark at least. For not paying attention.
(See how ALREADY I'm being norty, no wonder the disciplinarians found me such a rewarding object of attention, nearly always something there needing a good seeing-to.)
I'm off to groom my dogs. Might mutter a psalm under my breath by way of atonement.
Liz (was 6's '66 - '68 )
Would you please stop changing your signature, I can't keep up.
I change my avatar but keep my signature.
"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
Just a passing thought on Miss Mercer - I had to drop History because it collided with my Chemistry, a shame because she really was a brilliant, iconoclastic teacher.
I remember her egging me on to present " the Hippopotamus" for the recitation competition in my UV - a satire which compared the Church to a Hippo wallowing in the mud... DR was not amused!
I also remember going to her flat for coffee one evening, with a group of UVI , and discussing everthing from literature to bra-burning - with Miss Rutherford and Betts, she certainly compensated for the suppressive attitude of DR and her cohorts.
I also remember the "logic" classes - did wonders for my adolescent brain!
Hertford - 5s/2s - 63-70
" I wish I were what I was when I wanted to be what I am now..."
I remember Miss Mercer arriving. Before her there was a tiny little woman Miss Page who taught History. Miss Mercer was a breath of fresh air from the start, unfortunately I did not do History - then it clashed with Physics. I was the only one in my year in 6s not doing History and felt really deprived by the stories the others told.
englishangel wrote:I think Mr Watson taught French and German when I was in sixth form.
I didn't realise he had been at CH for so long. I only had him the first year or so before he left. Must admit I was petrified of him and was glad when he left
HERRR VATSON was someone to be afraid of!!
Remebererd my german name now "Renate"
Yuck!
Miss Rutherford was a jolly old bean - somewhat rounded and with a blue rinse on her silver hair that started off term very dramtic and then gradually faded as term went by - she also taught German - and she was a Form Mistress for the 3rd years (they got to go upstairs for their form!!!! 1x and 1y were onthe right as you entered the school block, 2a and 2b the left and then you went upwards...
remember the bell for lesson changes?
Jude Comber (nee Kelynack) 5's 5.38 1975-1980 Herts. To Learn - read, to Know - write, to MASTER - Teach
I'm sure there was some sort of bell - didn't a 3rd yr get to ring a bell at the base of the School block and the science block? Or am i in imaginary land...?
I know Horsham has them - it's such a massive site -
Hey its snowing here!! yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Jude Comber (nee Kelynack) 5's 5.38 1975-1980 Herts. To Learn - read, to Know - write, to MASTER - Teach
Jude wrote:I'm sure there was some sort of bell - didn't a 3rd yr get to ring a bell at the base of the School block and the science block? Or am i in imaginary land...?
I honestly don't remember that at all Unless they stopped it by the time I was there.
Katharine wrote:I remember Miss Mercer arriving. Before her there was a tiny little woman Miss Page who taught History. .
What did you young people do to the staff to shrink them? First the picture of a tiny DR, and now a tiny Miss Page. If that was the same Frances Page who terrified me and was the reason I dropped History in the UV she was never tiny (at least by my standards). We all had to drop one subject from a limited range in our School Cert year.
Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit a social science.
Katharine wrote:I remember Miss Mercer arriving. Before her there was a tiny little woman Miss Page who taught History.
What did you young people do to the staff to shrink them? First the picture of a tiny DR, and now a tiny Miss Page. If that was the same Frances Page who terrified me and was the reason I dropped History in the UV she was never tiny (at least by my standards). We all had to drop one subject from a limited range in our School Cert year.
I remember Miss Frances Page, yes the same one I'm sure, as a little woman. I don't remember her as being terrifying. I had just two years of History with her. I've said somewhere else that we were the first year forced to choose between Physics and History for LV, except I wasn't given the choice!
Bet she'd be more than surprised to learn that I went on to do English A Level - and passed! 
I think we had one at Horsham 
I don't remember it at Hertford though.