Visit to the HHS Craft Fair Nov. 2003 (1)
| Have you been back? - Introduction | |
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Nov. 2003 On the 30th November a Craft Fair was held at our old School. A corridor parallel to the one in the photo has been created from the vicinity of the Boys' entrance. It extends the corridor running down from the old Needlework room of 1955-62 days, and leads to that "unsympathetic building" (Leighton) which mars the front elevation of the School. I had assumed that the old main entrance near the Head's study had been used for access to the new building - but no, all is undisturbed, as you can see. The gravel and the small set of steps to the left of the main steps are gone, as is the flagpole. |
| I had to take the photo through the glass window of the corridor, but still managed to notice that the destructive ivy had rallied and was on its way back up the wall on the far side. Access was denied to the part of the old building which runs from the boys' entrance along past the Head's study and Prefects' rooms towards the girls' cloakroom, but I did look along there, and noticed that the stone steps of the main staircase are gone, and metal-edged uniformly-sized risers and treads had replaced them. In every other classroom of the old part of School there were stalls selling a selection of handicrafts. Particularly noticeable were the efforts of the College's Rural Studies Department - holly wreaths, houseplants and succulents for sale lined the whole length of the top corridor, and a group of friendly young people were doing good business taking customers on a tour of the Rural Studies centre. That's a story for next time! Sheila Kelsall (Visit to the HHS Craft Fair Nov. 2003) | |
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Nov. 2003 On my recent visit to our old school I was interested in seeing the alterations previously photographed by Glenn Riley. I drove into the main entrance on Station Road, and upwards into an overspill carpark which was a grassy area at the side of some tennis courts which I decided had been laid over the old kitchen garden, Girls' Arch and Fives Court. Much of my subsequent visit was spent with my eyes closed, working out what used to occupy the area I could see when I opened them! |
| Standing at the side of my car, I looked around me, and recognised the Head's house, with its surrounding beech hedge. The familiar stone side of the main hall lay unchanged to my left, but beyond the Head's house and down the slope of the Girls' Walk there were several houses which seemed to continue down to the main road and then along it towards the church. There was surprisingly no trace of the Girls' Walk itself. Seeking the entrance to the building, I approached the Dell. Autumn's untidiness lay all around, with the bonus of a clear view through the bare trees. Another surprise came with the sight of four-feet-high concrete posts and chain-link wire mesh fencing which lined the edge of the path running along the outside of the Domestic Science room and ran along the back of the New Block. The words "ugly" and "not in keeping" sprang to mind. Did the Dell always seem so shallow? In my memory it had a steeper slope and the grass disappeared into dappled, then impenetrable shade. I suppose nearly 50 years - worth of annual leaf-mould had raised the ground level since then! There did not seem to have been any effort made to collect the dead leaves, which along with ivy and other evergreens covered the stone sides of the dell, and camouflaged the sandstone behind. I looked across at the back of the New Block and noticed a twisted, distorted tree trunk clinging to the rocky side and showing clear signs of human misuse. A blue nylon rope hung in tatters from a couple of places on the trunk, and suddenly I wanted to move away from the atmosphere of sadness and violation there. Now, where was that entrance?...... Sheila Kelsall (Visit to the HHS Craft Fair Nov. 2003) | |
| Have you been back? - 2 | |
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Nov. 2003 "This is a new way into School", I thought. I had just spent a few minutes at the side of the Dell, lost in a strange dimension of swirling remembrances bridging the last forty years, but it was now time to enter the building. When I was at HGS in the late 50's and early 60's, if one walked to the outside through any of the Hall doors and turned right, away from the Girl's cloakroom entrance, then at the end of the side wall of the Hall there was a widening of the path, and on the right, one could then see the stonework of the side of the Domestic Science Room. |
| I recall there was a low stone wall to the left, which formed an edging for the rhododendrons and other shrubs which grew there. In the right-angle formed between the Domestic Science wall and the wall behind the Hall stage, as it were, there were doors which were rarely opened. They provided access to a storeroom which lay between the rear of the Hall and the aforesaid Domestic Science room. Could this have been where the P.E. crash mats were stored? I do not remember ever seeing either of the sets of doors to this area open. I found myself inside School, looking back along the storeroom and marvelling at how wide and deep it was. Suddenly, in one downward glance, the familiarity of my schooldays returned with a bump! The black mottled specks on the marble floors and the occasional crack which ran from one side to the other; the black border along the sides of the floors; the steps down to the lower level of the Hall corridor; the cupboard at the side of the Hall where as an Assistant Prefect I had kept my books, and the glass cases on the top of these cupboards, which I remember as being empty, but lined with faded blue sugar paper - all were there in front of me! By now I was heading into the Hall, and my first major shock. They say that when a place is visited which has been familiar in one's childhood, it usually appears to be smaller. In this case, the Hall floor space is actually so. During our Assemblies, the lower forms of the School stood in lines near the front of the stage, and so it went that the older the children were, the nearer the Honours Boards at the back they stood. The boys occupied the half of the Hall on the Quad side, and the girls stood nearer to the outside doors, leaving a central aisle about a yard wide. I looked up and noted the fluorescent lighting strips. As pupils, we had individual lights there with white fluted shades. I remembered the domed, cylindrical ceiling, (similar to that of the Dining Hall) with its decorative plaster ridges, and the way that it was shaped to take account of the high windows. I had gazed up there many times looking for inspiration during the Test Exams and G.C.E's! There were also those periods of boredom during Assemblies. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the the Holy Ghost, Amen" I heard echoing down the half-century. "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name......." was our daily morning prayer. I looked down at the carpeted floor, and pictured the herringbone parquet which I assumed lay beneath. In preparation for the Prefects' Dances we used to sprinkle talcum powder on it to ensure 'slide'. At the beginning of each School year, at our first Assembly we all encountered a newly polished expanse of this patterned wood, demonstrating the care and attention bestowed upon it by the caretaker and his staff, no doubt. I wondered if the recesses which 'located' the bolts on the wall bars were still there. When swung out into the room at right angles to the walls, they and the climbing frame were steadied by this method. As I approached the exit door, I saw on the wall to my right, six wooden-framed photos of how the School used to look. They appear on Index 8 of our website. "Time to see if the Girl's Cloakroom is still there!", I thought, as I went through the door and turned right. Sheila Kelsall (Visit to the HHS Craft Fair Nov. 2003) | |
| Have you been back? - 3 | |
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Nov. 2003 Having absorbed the changes in the School Hall since I was last there in 1962, I headed for a look at the Head's study and Prefects' Rooms. With the quad to my left, I approached the right-angled, left-handed corner just past the back doors of the Hall. There's a boring bit of corridor about twelve feet in length which has plain walls and ceiling and the same marble floor that ran all around the Quad. |
| Further along on the right are the doors through which all the girls usually entered the "temple of learning" that was School. I remembered that going left there, towards the Main Staircase, one encountered a different atmosphere. It was darker; there were more doors right and left, and above all, the sound of one's footsteps changed. At busy times, here the pupils' feet had made a thunderous sound, because the floors were wooden. This area formed the original part of the building, and cellars probably lay beneath. Any further progress I had in mind was curtailed by a large sign forbidding access. That part of the building was not being used for the Fair, so I stood there and brought to mind the countless young people - including myself - who had walked the fairly short distance from the Head's study to the Hall along that very route, quaking in their boots - for two reasons. First, it was unlikely that anyone had previously accompanied the Head on a walk of any length, much less with the eyes of the assembled School upon them, and this, together with the probable one-to-one chat with the Head while walking, would have kept many a pupil awake the night before. The second reason for the nerves would have been the prospect of reading the lesson during Assembly in front of eight hundred or so of one's peers. I didn't know too many people who would have enjoyed this without the trepidation! A one hundred and eighty degree turn brought me to the doors of the Girls' Cloakroom. They were locked, but just look at the photo! A wider doormat and a bin in the corner - that's all the difference I could see from the days of forty-odd years ago! I don't know whether the cloaks area is now used for the same purpose. It is unlikely that today's students would place a hat, coat and scarf on a peg with a pump bag beneath as we did, and be able to rely on it's being undisturbed until the end of the day. I remember seeing the occasional pump bag thrown onto the shelf on the right after it had been found in the wrong place, or had been dropped on the floor elsewhere. Those sensible rounded joints between floor and wall were just as I remembered them all along the Quad corridors too, and that tiled dado was always painted black. The single-glazed windows used to steam up when the conditions were right, giving opportunity for some transient graffiti, (usually a heart with an arrow through it and initials) and I recall that on very cold Winter days the radiator was very popular! I decided it was time I retraced my steps along past the Hall if I wanted to see more of the Fair and School. Sheila Kelsall (Visit to the HHS Craft Fair Nov. 2003) | |
| Have you been back? - 4 | |
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Nov. 2003 Standing at my point of entry into School - the old store cupboard door behind the stage in the Hall, I looked down the full length of the corridor which had provided access to the Domestic Science Room, the Physics Room and the Music Room of my Schooldays. Tables were arranged along the length of the right-hand-side of the corridor, and contained hundreds of potted plants and seedlings which were being offered for sale by the Rural Studies Department of the College. |
| Holly wreaths stood on the windowsills, and hung from hooks in the woodwork of the windows, and of course, many other visitors were milling around me. I was interested to see the Quad. Gone were the paths leading to Wendy and the weather station. Now why should that be? Ease of mowing? Change for change's sake? I wonder. A sad and stagnant small "pool", presumably intended to be decorative, was situated in the grassed area at the corner near the Domestic Science room, and around it was growing a collection of conifers which probably had looked quite attractive a few years ago when first planted, but which were now too close together, and had outgrown the space available. More importantly, they restricted the view from that side of the building; they restricted the light available within the building, and their roots will no doubt pose a threat to those marble corridors if they are allowed to grow unchecked. Definitely a "thumbs down" from me for this ill-judged garden makeover! Surely the Quad is not a modern garden, and should have retained its more formal arrangement to be sympathetic to its surroundings! So much could have been added to this area to enhance its original formal concept, instead of 'dumbing it down' and then neglecting it. Come back Wendy! - where are you? Sheila Kelsall (Visit to the HHS Craft Fair Nov. 2003) | |
| Have you been back? - 5 | |
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Nov. 2003 True to tradition, the Domestic Science Room of my long - gone Schooldays was being used for refreshments on the day I visited. I could hear cup - on - saucer noises amid the sounds of conversations, and could see a busy cafe scene of people, chairs and tables as I stood at the door. At the next doorway along there was a table across the entrance of what seemed to be a small storeroom, and soup was being sold there in polystyrene cups. |
| I found the Middle Classroom of that wing was so different from my memory of it as to be unrecognisable. When Mr. Farrar took us for General Science there in the '50's, there was a raised plinth at the front of the room with either a bench or a teachers' desk upon it, and a blackboard which slid up and down on rollers at top and bottom. I recall that one of the sections contained squares painted on it in a grid formation. The surface available on which the teacher could chalk his information could be moved by grasping a horizontal metal strip on the board and pushing it upwards or downwards. Diagrams and homework assignments appeared there, and sometimes a previously prepared set of questions could be wound round from the rear of the board after the initial verbal introduction had been delivered. The necessary blackboard equipment was usually nearby - chalks both coloured and white, and board rubbers, which were felt pads stuck onto a wooden piece of wood about six inches long and one and a half inches wide. The back of the wooden part of the rubber (which was where one held the item to rub out the chalk marks) was not flat, but had a 'dip' in it running lengthwise, and rounded edges for ease of gripping. The felt of the ones which had been in use a long time became worn down at one end, and sometimes the rubber became so clogged with chalk that it needed tapping against an outside wall to clear it. I remember the felt pads always had a black or grey striped layer or two in the central area - a bit like a sandwich filling. Black was usually the colour of the boards in every classroom at the beginning of each School year, due to the cleaners or the caretaker washing them down during the long Summer holiday. As the terms progressed, the became greyboards, really. Benches containing Bunsen Burners and their gas taps ran sideways-on to the windows, which overlooked the Dell. Drawers and cupboards lay beneath them, and as they were higher than normal desks, stools instead of chairs were provided. The floor was untreated floorboards and the ceilings high and white. Was there a poster of a Valence Table hung on one of the walls? Certainly there were no examples of the pupils' work there. Our Exercise Books contained all the evidence of our academic labours, which were first honed to perfection in our Rough Books - or not, in many cases! So, what of the room's appearance nowadays? One sees carpeted floor, lowered suspended ceiling, fluorescent lights, no plinth, no blackboard, and notice boards at the front and back of the room containing displays of children's work. It is a multi-purpose space, and on that day, there seemed only myself, the windows, the French Doors and the view outside to bear witness to its origins. On to the Music Room. Although I have memories of Miss Carter and her Music lessons, they were not connected to this room, but were given to the classes of my first-year in the classroom opposite the Head's study. It was Mr. Boyd and Miss Evans who held Choir and Orchestra practices in this room. All the School's classes had Music here at least once a week, and would sing, accompanied by the teacher on the piano which was wheeled out of the storeroom near the French windows. In there was kept the books and sheet music for the choirs, the musical instruments, the records and the gramophone player (West Riding Issue) with its plywood case and hinged lid. Unlike the other two rooms along this wing of the School, it had windows on three sides, making it seem bright, light and airy, somehow. The desks stood in rows, and were of a light-coloured wood, the floor was again, untreated floorboards. The blackboard was there, with its staves painted on in lines, and a teachers' desk, from which the register was called during first lesson of the mornings and afternoons for the form which had the Music Room as its Form Room. I don't ever recall anyone having the temerity to 'bunk off' lessons, though it may have happened. A high, white ceiling provided good acoustics, and the uplifting atmosphere of the room played its part in the many individual and joint achievements in the Music Concerts, House Competitions and performances on a wider stage. Could this be the same room? I saw a lowered, sound-absorbent squared ceiling and the all-pervading carpeted floor. What is this fascination for carpets in schools? They become un-hygienic; require electricity to clean them properly; require regular expensive replacement and more importantly, seem to be an unspoken acknowledgement that young people can not control the way they move and speak so as not to disturb others. Today's Music Room is another of those multi-use spaces which disappointingly lost all of its character and atmosphere when the carpet fitters and ceiling construction companies moved in. Sadly, the same story can be told of the other three classrooms leading down to the Boys' Entrance. I came away from the classrooms feeling much the same as a time-traveller from the Shakers would, after being dumped into an over-stuffy, cluttered Victorian Drawing Room. Sheila Kelsall (Visit to the HHS Craft Fair Nov. 2003) | |