Having rediscovered my school reports from Wombwell Hall a few days ago, I have been glued to them! That’s clearly what a global Lockdown is likely to do and admittedly this sudden surge of interest has been magnified by the plethora of wounded comments emerging from my laptop and revolving around Miss Hoffman who sounds like the headmistress from hell. Fortunately for me, this legendary Principal arrived after my time and presumably directly followed the rather less brutal Miss Fuller. Although I was greatly in awe of Miss D Fuller and now wonder if she might have been Dorothy or Dierdre or even Demelza - and was certainly filled with dread when sent to her for something like a uniform breach, I cannot recall any direct sadism at her hands. My mother cautiously admired her but regularly commented in a low voice on what she termed her Mannishness! During that transition period when the old order changed there was an overhaul of the school uniform because in my day it revolved around green gored skirts and cream blouses. A couple of years after I left it seems to have become blue.
Analysing the end of term comments on the now yellowed and slightly musty pages issued by the Kent Education Committee in the early part of the 1950s, I see clearly I was never going to be a runaway success academically. Considering that I would always have placed English as my most favourite subject I have no memory whatsoever of Miss MMH who appeared to be Form 1G’s first English teacher. Well that is almost true because I do know that it was she who put to me the horrifying question in the very first week or two of that very first term. It came out of the blue, asked in front of the entire class and I was both startled and embarrassed. Was anything worrying me she wanted to know – did I have any pre-occupying concerns?
I think I had been staring out of the window, across the wide park towards the field where another junior class was attempting to master the rudiments of hockey. Whatever was happening in Miss MMH’s English class at that time was clearly of little interest to me but had she asked me the question in a less public manner I might now recall more about her. It’s unlikely that I would have revealed any of the numerous anxieties in my thirteen year old life because at that age the last thing you want is counselling from your English teacher but a little more sensitivity might well have prompted a place in memory for her at the very least. The trouble is I suppose that schools did not really do Sensitivity in a big way back then.
Now had it been Miss SMH who queried my state of mind I would have understood both the question and the inattention much better. Miss S M Hart taught us Arithmetic, a subject I both feared and detested. She notes that I found her subject Difficult, later that I was a Slow Worker, later still that I should try to learn the Basic Principles. I had no idea what she was talking about. She was a broad, angular woman with iron grey hair in tight sausage curls at the nape of her neck, sometimes held in place with a hairnet and she wore a great deal of Prussian Blue; suits with military style jackets. She did a lot of staring into the middle distance herself when she spoke of matters other than mathematics and of aircraft in particular which appeared to be one of her favourite subjects. It was years later that someone told me she had in fact been one of those extraordinarily courageous women who delivered Spitfires and Hurricanes around the country during WW2. I so wish I had known that at the time, that she had once had once led such an adventurous life. I might even have concentrated harder in her classes because anything is possible.
Another subject I found extraordinarily difficult was French, taught by Miss SMS – the infamous Miss S. Smith who was also predetermined to eventually hold me up to ridicule when I revealed to the woman we all thought was her cousin – Miss K Smith, that my great ambition was to become a famous actress. Strangely I did not hold the rather wonderful Miss KS responsible in any way for this interlude of horror. Her putative cousin, Miss S also taught hockey and appears to have thought I was a promising player which only shows that she too was not concentrating as hard as she might have been.
A woman I grew to detest was Miss DKS, she of the tiny and neat handwriting and lilac knitwear. Miss D Springate taught Geography and I might well have done better at identifying the rivers of the world had we got on better. I might even have later understood that Costa Rica might well have been a desirable holiday spot but it was not in Spain. I can’t remember now when we first came head to head but we did so regularly and I have memories of being quite openly rude to her. She must have been delighted when I was absent for more than a month with Chicken Pox during the Summer term of 1955 and she therefore did not have to make cautiously negative remarks alongside the lowest grade she dared to give me. Fortunately the more pleasing Miss W Wood noted that the only reason I had not been placed in an exam position for shorthand and typing that term was merely because of the absence – but I had worked hard and not been unduly hindered by my illness. Directly below these heartening remarks Miss PHR, whoever she was, notes that my work in her Accounts class was erratic which I still feel was unfair of her under the circumstances. Had the woman not noticed I had been missing for weeks? A few months later she observed that I had little interest in the subject. I imagine it became obvious to me that Accounts was simply a form of Arithmetic in disguise.
I remember Miss MJE quite well, Miss Eatch our form teacher for several terms and our History teacher. She was tearful with big breasts and often wore blouses that should have been a size bigger. Perhaps she simply bought them in haste, unwilling to draw attention to her breast measurement by trying them on, and then reluctant to return them. We were cruel and reduced her to tears on more than one occasion which she did not deserve. None of us could have been all that interested in her subject and I see that I once came third in the term examination but was still only given a B grade. Perhaps she had not quite forgiven me for leading a small rebellion of some kind against her.
I also recall Miss EN perhaps only because she was also our form teacher for two terms. Miss E Norman had a loud voice, a country accent and taught Science. She was astonished that we could not identify Romney Marsh Sheep and didn’t know what Animal Husbandry was. Her name I feel might have been Elaine or even Elspeth.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Wombwell Hall and was completely in love with the old house the adoration in no way extended to the educational opportunities being offered me and have little memory of many of the staff. A Miss SMM felt I definitely needed to concentrate more in Music, yet another Music Teacher, a Miss MB said I showed no interest in the subject. An Art teacher with attractive calligraphic initials – HMK, that still manage to jump from the page made comment that I needed to work more thoughtfully and vigorously and months later that I was still making no improvement whatsoever.
Safe to say I was not a good student. Perhaps I was just too consumed with the house itself, the sweeping cantilevered staircase, the lofty library ceiling, the tall windows with tantalizing views, the narrow back stairs that only the staff members were allowed to use. Caught once on this forbidden staircase by no less than Miss Fuller herself I even dared to query why it was we students were not allowed to use it and added that in the heyday of the building surely it would have been the wide staircase in the hall that was prohibited. I had so frequently visualized maids enveloped in linen overalls scurrying up and down with trays of morning tea for the gentry whilst girls dressed in velvet and satin used the much more magnificent flight at the front of the house. Although I did not verbalise this picture of late Victorian life the Headmistress looked at me sharply as if trying to judge if my remark necessitated a threat of a detention before saying that the narrow back staircase was in sad need of repair and until that work could be carried out the less people walking on it the better. She even half smiled. She was most definitely no Miss Hoffman!
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