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....
Funny! I've been checking up Moygashel... I didn't think linen could be called "pure linen" if a cotton or synthetic fibre is blended with the flax? Moygashel seems to be called everywhere "pure linen" with its beauty attributed to being created with the soft water running down from the Mountains of Mourne - doesn't that sound lovely? One reference I found for a "crease resistant finish".
I encountered a post from woman asking for a good home for a sixty-year-old Moygashel linen blouse in an unappealing mustard yellow. Perhaps it was the same dye batch?
Dresses never washed? Frances! I shudder! Did you stitch in those ol' dress shields?
"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.""
midget wrote:Were the dresses definitely linen? I ask because the fabric generally known as Moygashel ( MoeGASHel, not MoygashEL was a viscose rayon, with mixture of eithe cotton or linen, and treated with an anti-crease finish.
Really? There are a few websites about Moygashel (the fabric), and the implication throughout is that it's pure linen. Wikipedia (for what it's worth) says that the village name is stressed on the second syllable (as you'd expect) and the fabric on the first.
In my experience, pure linen is not comfortable on the skin. I have some inherited linen sheets, but those made of a linen/cotton mixture (called "union") are much nicer. I also have a pure linen jacket: the original crumpled look.
When I first started work in textiles in 1955, Moygashel was almost e generic term for fabric of a certain construction, rather as Biro and Hoover were in their respective fields. Many manufacturers were still working to the wartime (mainly very good) fabric constructions, issued under the Utility scheme.
Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit a social science.
michael scuffil wrote: I also have a pure linen jacket: the original crumpled look.
Smashing! Rock that look, Michael!
"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.""
Katharine wrote:Angela - you should see Michael in deerstalker and cape - a sight for sore eyes!
Katharine is fantasizing. She's never seen me wearing a deerstalker (though I do have one somewhere). My hat (hand-made in Cologne by one of the city's two surviving craft hatters, and yes, he's mad) has a wide brim all the way round.
Mustn't Michael be just so.... stylish! Ooh, what else?
Do you have a panama hat as well, Michael? My dread of the scruffy Hertford panama doesn't extend to elegant menswear!
"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.""
The same hatter used to make me panamas, but now he's introduced me to a different fibre, grown in the Philippines, called parabuntal. It looks like panama, but it's softer and, because it's less brittle, much longer lasting. My black straw hat is panama, though.
Just had a feeling that that might be your style...
I wish men dressed up a bit more these days! Sorry, off-topic! But I often seek out an episode of Poirot to admire the immaculate Captain Hastings!
"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.""
Angela I agree completely - I've seen a couple of elegantly dressed men recently and felt that we could do with more of this.
By the way - I have a CH hat in my possession and don't know what it is. Neither do I know how I acquired it and only knew when my mother cleared out the attic a couple of years ago and passed it on to me. No-one wore hats anymore by the time I started in 1970 (apart from the dear old Ashborne hats). It is round and, like the blazers, a dark blue with gold braiding round the edges. The CH badge is on the front.
By the way - I have a CH hat in my possession and don't know what it is. Neither do I know how I acquired it and only knew when my mother cleared out the attic a couple of years ago and passed it on to me. No-one wore hats anymore by the time I started in 1970 (apart from the dear old Ashborne hats). It is round and, like the blazers, a dark blue with gold braiding round the edges. The CH badge is on the front.
As a mere male, I hesitate to offer an opinion - but, what the H**** here goes! From your description it is almost certainly a "chapel hat.
