Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

I think I lost my first reply to this one.. sorry. I don't think I was consciously aware of Margaret Gowing (so thank you for that, Rex.. great detail, as ever). Is she still living, and might that be why CH would not name a House after her?
Funny about the emphasis on Oxford. Not only Ida Busbridge and now Margaret Gowing but also Ruth Deech and Elizabeth Llewellyn Smith. Beyond that there are other distinguished Old Girls including Kathleen Duncan, Anthea Case and the recently departed Carol Adams... all of whom rose to the absolute top of their chosen fields.

Elliott House sounds good!

kerrensimmonds wrote:Is she still living, and might that be why CH would not name a House after her?

No, she died in 1998.

cstegerlewis said, apropos Barnes Wallis, that: "He wasn't 'famous' until the 1940's."

That is incorrect. He was very famous in the early 1930s as the designer of R-100, the finest and most successful British airship ever built - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-100 among many other sites. It was only the disastrous crash of its comeptitor, the R-101, that stopped further development of Wallis's design. He then achieved yet further fame as the inventor of geodetic constructiuon and as the designer of the Wellington bomber, arguably the best British bomber until the appearance of the Lancaster.

I would name a new house after Etta Harris, who attended CH Hertford in the late 1890s. On leaving, Etta went to university and then became a Latin teacher in a large day school in West Hartlepool. On 16 December 1914 at 8.10am three German warships started a bombardment of West Hartlepool, a barbarous and obviously totally unexpected action. Etta was having breakfast in the boarding house where she lived and immediately after the first shells had landed stood up, informed the others in the room "I must go to my girls" and left immediately. She was killed in the street only seconds later.

I consider her to epitomise the vast majority of Old Blues, both female and male, who may not have achieved the top of their professions, but who have lived honest and decent lives; who, when danger threatened, knew precisely and unquestioningly where their duty lay; and who, without having to think about it, put others before self.
DM

I stand corrected, I knew he designed R100 (far better than R-101 whihc i learnt about at Cardington a few years ago) just forgot that was in the thirties.

Whipping myself with birch and begging for mercy as we speak (that should provoke some comments )

A number of OBs from Hertford have said that they remember him coming but my memory had gone awry on that one until this morning when we were watching 'Future Weapons' on the Discovery channel and they were talking about Delta wing aircraft and it all came back to me. Concorde was just off the ground (1968?) and he said how much more efficient delta wings were than regular wings but the long term future of aircraft was in doubt because of the environmental impact and he felt the future lay in airships, particularly for freight.

If I remember correctly he also had a thing for submarines as they were less subject to the vagaries of the weather than surface ships.

englishangel wrote:If I remember correctly he also had a thing for submarines as they were less subject to the vagaries of the weather than surface ships.

Hi Mary

I remember a lecture that he gave - his wife (who seemed to be somewhat senile/suffering from Alzheimer's?) was on stage with him. I found the whole lecture fascinating, and remember something about submarines, and taking great circle routes beneath the polar ice.

He also came into 6s after some school function or other. Memory may be failing in regard to the finer details, but I seem to remember that he had met someone's (possibly Deborah's) father - a vicar - at a recent function, and said that he would say 'Hello' to Deb (or whoever) next time he was at Hertford, which he duly did, and chatted to the rest of the people in the Day Room at the time too.

On both occasions he seemed to me to be a thoroughly decent and lovable individual.

Yes, it's all coming back, great circle routes and ice caps.

Barnes Wallis gave the money for the upper dormitory in each house at Hertford to be converted into cubicles. Alex managed to break a shelf in her cubicle by climbing on it (not sure why - was she doing the cubi test?). As a punishment, she was made to write a letter to Barnes Wallis apologising. He wrote back a wonderful letter in return, explaining, with diagrams, the forces involved, and why the shelf was not able to bear her weight. I covetted the letter, but she wouldn't give it to me. I think she cut out the signature and sold it separately.

I share Caroline's good opinion of him. He seemed a kind man, with a gentle sense of humour. He helped make us Hertford girls feel part of the wider CH community.

We were also impressed *thread merge* that when the Carmen was sung at some official occasion, Barnes Wallis joined in (standing on the stage in the school hall) without needing to look at his copy of the words.

We already have Grecians West, so why not rename Grecians East after one of the other Hertford headmistresses?

Very clever

I thought that, too!!!

When I was at college one block, near the lodge was called Lodge - it wasn't until later that I learnt one of the early benefactors was called Miss Lodge! Perhaps they are already named after DR and somebody else

Maybe one of the Wise Men from the East...?