Miss Sands of Wombwell Hall

Looking back on those largely halcyon days of memory at Wombwell Hall I no longer know whether the staff member I have locked into recall as Miss Sands the Religious Education Teacher might have actually been Mrs Sands. As this thought somewhat strangely occurred to me at 3 am and as I still have all my relevant School Reports I even spent some time searching through the various comments made during the time I was there but she always designated herself as simply MLS. And before you mention it, yes of course I realise this is quite neurotic behaviour. She may have been Margaret Louise or Mary Leonie or maybe something much more innovative. It’s hard to know after so many years but what I do know is that throughout my several years attending her classes and feeling that I benefited from her tutelage it was only in the final term that I shone in any way because it was then that I came top in the Spring Term Examination. It was the first and only time I had come top in anything at all, either before or since so little wonder that it is committed to memory. To be fair I think Miss Sands was as surprised as I was.

Until that significant result her comments on my Reports had hovered around remarks noting that with added application I had done better recently or even that I had worked with interest at a particular time but when I unexpectedly excelled she noted that I had not merely worked hard but done extremely well as my final examination result attested. The sudden success was bewildering as far as I was concerned and I later sensibly came to assume that it had something to do with the more academic students having little interest in matters pertaining to religion whereas I could always be relied upon to become quite engrossed in the idea of a Special Being and all the ideas both metaphysical and logical that accompanied His presence. I had not at that time yet considered that God might be a woman. I was too engrossed in wondering if any particular idea or ideal connected to spirituality was in fact a force for good or evil in the world. You could argue either way and that’s generally what I did if I couldn’t find a real person to argue with. I blame Roman Catholicism because there is something about growing up within the Faith, even via a group of rather lapsed believers such as The Constants and The Hendys that predisposes their young towards a general commitment and allegiance to the philosophy of One True God. And quite apart from that of course the Catholic Church has always been overly fond of sinners and basks in the glorious idea of Penitents. Little wonder that some bored teenagers such as myself toyed seriously with the idea of a life spent in a Nunnery.

At that time at Wombwell Hall the R.E. classes were taken in what I had long decided had once been the Dining Room of the old house. This idea of mine was not based in fact and I came to that conclusion largely because there were two doors to the room opposite each other and one led directly down to the kitchen area, past Miss Fuller’s office. The other door opened into the central hall where we had a Group Assemblies three times each week. I harboured pleasant daydreams where the Colyer-Ferguson family entertained friends to lunches that were obviously quite formal, and had candlelit suppers together in the room where Miss Sands later conducted her R.E. classes and servants bustled to and from the kitchen with platters of all things nutritious. And of course I wondered what led the family to abandon the rather lovely house though later found that the artisan housing of the latter part of the nineteenth century began to creep ever closer across once green fields and verdant orchards and definitely had a large part to play in the momentous decision they made in 1937.

Nearly twenty years later Miss M.L Sands trod firmly upon the boards of the Colyer-Ferguson dining room and instructed us on spiritual matters. She had an appearance that was almost as sandy as her name. Although she was not in any way overweight she always appeared bulky and seemed uncomfortable in her clothes. She wore plaid patterned skirts in various sandy shades and hand knitted cardigans with intricate patterns, one of which featured a swan on a beige background stretching from left to right across the shoulders as it paddled upon a lake. Miss Sands’ knitwear was never made of ten ply QuikKnit yarn but always of four ply which as every knitter knew took forever to complete. For this reason my own Forest Green school cardigans were always without fail constructed from QuikKnit purchased from a stall in the Saturday market because my mother was an inveterate and impatient knitter and greatly irritated by lack of progress. Once I learned to knit competently myself I was astonished at how unlikely it was for her to unpick even a line in order to retrieve a dropped stitch. Such irascibilities were definitely not a feature of the workmanship displayed by whoever created the collection of cardigans worn by Miss Sands in the early 1950s, however.

Julia Hill who had until I excelled so surprisingly usually gained the highest R.E. mark had confidently been expected to do so once again. She was a great favourite with the sandy R.E. teacher and they were consequently rather appreciative of each other. Julia admired the Sea Island Cotton shirts worn under the four ply cardigans and the careful embroidery on the collars, featuring woodland flowers and from time to time the wearer’s initials – MLS, beautifully sewn and displaying the effortless assurance of a confident stitcher. Julia, never known to lack confidence said that had she not been playing Malvolio in the class drama production of The Merchant of Venice that term she would certainly not have allowed herself to be beaten by someone like me. I definitely did not like the way she said that but did not particularly wish to make a complete enemy of her so did not retaliate. Miss K Smith, she added, was a hard taskmaster where performance was concerned and when I feigned disinterest she looked at me knowingly and added that everyone was aware that I was wildly in love with Miss K.S and couldn’t understand why I had not bothered to audition for a part myself. With three rehearsals weekly there would then have been no time left for useless and boring R.E. exam swot. I ignored these remarks and continued to consider how unlikeable this particular classmate was.

Although I found the R.E. classes a great deal more interesting than mathematics or science or geography at times I thought some of the things Miss Sands said hard were to accept and she was most of the time disinclined to debate a point. On one occasion when she was talking about Simon Peter washing the feet of Jesus she hastily added that it had not been an act of humility or obeisance but simply because that’s what people did in those days in that part of the world. They lived in an arid climate where the heat was searing and whereas we might wash our hands and face, Jesus and his Disciples would rather use any available water to wash their hot and dusty feet. It was a sensible use of precious water in fact. People did not waste water back then the way we were inclined to in the Spring of 1956. I asked her if she was absolutely sure of that and she seemed quite annoyed and said of course she was sure. Jesus would have been one hundred per cent against such Acts of Humility and Obeisance – he simply was not that kind of human being and that was totally clear. It wasn’t altogether clear to me but I did not query this line of thought further.

Valerie Goldsack and her best friend Yvonne from Swanscombe told me they were amazed that the first time I came top in anything it happened to be R.E. because Miss Sands did not seem to like me all that much. I agreed that I had been quite startled myself but put it down to having a particular interest in religion which made them look at each other knowingly and exchange smiles before Valerie ventured that her father had said it was something of a Soft Subject, a bit like Anthropology had been for him at Gravesend Grammar. It wasn’t difficult, she said, to do well in R.E so I added that I was definitely considering devoting my life to God by becoming a nun which seemed to amuse them even more. Yvonne said that R.E. was the most boring class of the week in her opinion and she really disliked Thursday afternoons simply because of it except for the times when Miss Sands used Bad Language which could be hilarious. Valerie said that when she told her father about that shocking incident he checked out the details in their Home Encyclopedia because he had definitely not liked the sound of the expressions that had been used.

They were referring to the recent occasion when Miss Sands told us that the Ark of the Covenant and furniture of the Tabernacle were made of Shittim Wood. There had been sharp intakes of breath from girls like Valerie and Yvonne and perhaps also Julia and barely suppressed giggles from at least a third of the remainder. The rest of us looked at each other uncertainly and then watched with horror as Miss Sands began to write squeakily but firmly on the board in bold letters – Shittim Wood! After an interminable silence Julia asked in her Malvolio stage-projected voice if that particular wood had always had that name because she had never heard of it and then outbreaks of proper laughter erupted from various areas at the back of the room so she tossed her head and looked behind her, appreciatively and then sat up a little straighter. Julia Hill the Actress – Miss Hill the Entertainer! Miss Sands said in a voice that did not change in any way that it was the wood of the Shittah Tree now more commonly known as the Acacia. She carefully added the words Shittah and Acacia to the chalkboard. The various woods mentioned in the Bible were interesting, she told us. Some people she added, seemed to think that Dogwood had been used for the cross on which Our Lord was crucified for instance and that later the tree became ashamed so God ensured that it would henceforth grow small and twisted and never be used for such a purpose again. She added that according to the sacred tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church the True Cross had been fashioned from three different varieties of wood – Cedar, Pine and Cypress. These varieties she carefully added to the list on the board. Then she looked directly at Rimma Klotz because her family was Russian and therefore she must surely have insider knowledge with regard to the Orthodox Church. In point of fact Rimma’s family was Jewish and had fled from a village pogram early in the twentieth century. They were possessed of little of the knowledge Miss Sands attributed to them. But that was hardly her fault as she couldn’t be expected to know everything. I wondered how the mysterious Orthodox Church differed from the Church we were all reasonably familiar with but did not like to ask.

On R.E. afternoons I usually walked to the bus stop with Gloria Glover who was on the Shittim Wood occasion still highly amused by the incident that had brightened up the last class of the day. She said you could always rely on Religious Education to provide a few laughs and wasn’t Miss Sands a card? I nodded doubtfully and a few weeks later when I wanted to discuss with her the fact that I had come top in the exam Gloria just said well somebody had to come top and it might as well be me if I was really serious about becoming a nun. I should know, she said, that if Julia Hill had wanted to, she could easily have beaten me because she was what all the staff called An Outstanding Student and Gloria had actually heard Miss K.Smith mention her Outstandingness one afternoon after Hockey to Miss S.Smith. I wondered if that was true but even if it wasn’t I found the idea of Miss K.Smith saying such a thing strangely irritating.

Several months after I left Wombwell Hall I very nearly came face to face with Miss Sands the R.E. teacher in the Promenade Gardens, in Gravesend. She was accompanied by a woman who to all intents and purposes was simply an older version of herself, sandy and bulky and bent over, leaning heavily upon a stick. Perhaps it was her mother. She was in a heated altercation with a teenage boy from whom she appeared to have confiscated a catapult. He had attacked one of the swans, apparently, a fact that she had clearly found deeply distressing. I paused to see what might happen next, but far enough away from them not to be noticed. As the confrontation refused to descend into anything more excitingly violent, after a while I began to walk away – but not before I noticed that she was wearing her Four Ply cardigan with the paddling swan across the back. There was something strangely uplifting about that and for the briefest second or two I wanted to say Hello.

My thoughts turned back to Miss Sands, the swan and the Shittim Wood when I learned rather more recently that the final demise of Wombwell Hall had come in 1994 when ownership of the place rested with a nursing home. The place was totally demolished overnight that Easter to make way for a housing development.