Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Flamblogger: H is for...

H is for HIGH SCHOOL....
BRIDLINGTON HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS,  to be exact.
In spite of the fact that it was an all girls school, it was simply a regular high school.  That's the way it was done in those days, boys at one school, girls at another.  You can tell that I'm a dinosaur!  This was the days before comprehensive schools in England.  So did we grow up with complexes about boys?  Did we feel deprived? Believe me we did not!  There was plenty of association between the boys' school and the girls' school.  After school and weekends we had many opportunities of which to take advantage.  In fact, on SPORTS DAY the boys visited the girls' school in flocks because we girls did sports in our uniform underwear knickers -- green ones.!!  Too bad I don't have any photos of that!


BRIDLINGTON HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

It was a beautiful old building, especially this wing you see here.  We had a great gymnasium, the beautiful Bickersteth Library, and a large hall with a choir loft, organ and balcony.  It was known as the White Hall for obvious reasons.  There was a large playing field area on which we played field hockey, lacrosse, cricket, rounders, and net ball.  Around the field were four or five grass tennis courts in addition to three or four hard courts. Sadly today it has been made into flats.
I loved my days at school.  We had all the normal, good, clean fun that kids had in that day.  "School days are the happiest days of your life" it has been said and for me it was just about true ("just about" because I've had a lot of happy days since) in spite of the hated lisle stockings and beret style hat that we HAD to wear to and from school.  Trouble for you if you were caught by a prefect without your hat on!




The prefects of the sixth form and sixth senior with the headmistress (r) Miss Muir, and my all time favorite teacher, Miss Eaton. 

I'm not on this photo, I must have been absent that day.  But I am still in active touch with three of the girls  shown above.  And don't we look sharp in our hunter green skirts (everyone else had to wear gymslips), crisp, white vyella blouses and ties striped horizontally in black, white and green. and anchored with our proudly worn prefect badges.  You should have seen our blazers  -- striped vertically in black white and green.  We looked like zebras.  But we were so proud of them.
I am thankful daily  for the really good education I received there. I was not an outstanding student.  Somehow it didn't dawn on me that we were actually supposed to learn what we were taught -- that is until my father said that if I wanted to stay at school after age 16 and attend college, I had to pass my GCE exams.  I had never studied so hard as I did for those exams, as opposed to not studying at all for prior exams.  I took seven subjects and passed all seven. I was really motivated. Thankfully I did well and the rest, as they say, is history.
SO 'H' IS FOR HAPPY HIGH SCHOOL DAYS!

21 comments:

Tumblewords: said...

Happy works with this post! Hearing others' memories is such fun.

Wanda said...

Love the pictures. So much character in the buildings, and I noticed only one has her legs crossed.

I had happy High School days...

Unknown said...

Wonderful photos.
Happy is an excellent H-word! (I chose it for my H-word, too.) And 'happy' seems to apply to your time at High School.

What happened after that? I think maybe we were happier when life was simpler!

Best wishes,
Anna
Anna's H-word-abcWed

mrsnesbitt said...

Oh yes! A green school skirt! lol! A great era Chris - yes education is the opener of doors!

Thanks
Denise
ABC Team

Autumn Leaves said...

A most delightful H day here, Chris. You were blessed with a great education by the looks and sound of it. I rather love the school building and its old vines. The uniforms sound a tad horrific! LOL

Mara said...

It sounds like you had a great time in school. Although the uniform does sound a bit dubious (we never had to wear a uniform to school, so all school uniforms sound dubious to me).

Rune Eide said...

Ah, the good old days. I can see from the first photo that this was a school building with dignity and history - not a modern shoebox.

Oh well, things were always better before... ;-)

PS Drop by and you might find an H that you might enjoy.

Gattina said...

My school or high school days weren't happy at all ! It was in the 50th, Bonn (Germany) where I lived was to 80 % in ruins. Our school was a quickly built up prefab, too hot in summer too cold in winter and we were 80 in one classroom !
High school of course was also strictly girls and boys separated, but it was also in an awful building. There was no sport, because there was no space, People had other preoccupations then their children. It really became better when I moved to Brussels and there I had a very nice high school time and we were mixed. There were only 200 students in the German school girls and boys together. I didn't speak any french at that time.

jabblog said...

My uniform was green too and worn with a green striped tie, a velour hat in winter and a panama in summer. We had horrible round-toed house shoes and we did gymnastics in our navy blue bloomers, but wore shorts - divided skirt-style - for games.
The school is still in place, and still a girls' grammar school.

Sylvia K said...

Great post for the H Day! Love reading about your school days. And always love the old photos! Great looking group! Really neat uniforms! Hope your week is going well!

Sylvia

Roger Owen Green said...

A great personal HISTORY you shared.

ROG, ABC Wednesday team

Unknown said...

thanks for the history of your high school. Mine in the 1950's in the US was boys in one wing and girls in the other with a hallway to the cafeteria and gym in the middle!
Helen Mac
ABC team

Paula Scott Molokai Girl Studio said...

Happy high school days-isn't that the truth! It should be. For my son who graduated from his high school this past May with over 800 students in his class, he says that it is stressful and each day full of drama and incidents everywhere.
I too, went to an all girls high school!

Martha said...

Hi Chris. I had to smile at the comment you left about the blueberries. They grew in my yard and Wanda asked to borrow them for her drawing challenge. (I have enough challenge picking them and so did not draw them.)

High school... Yes, happy days.

kaybee said...

Amazing how sisters can differ...unfortunately those were NOT my most favourite days! I hated the uniform - especially those green knickers, and I quit school BEFORE my GCE exams. But I turned out ok, after all. Learned a lot in the school of life!

Great post, Chris. Happy Hunting for "I" !!

Jose said...

H is for HELLO HOW are you. Nice pics Chris, all in black and white too. When I think of my HIGH school days I too think of HAPPY times. I love school.

VioletSky said...

My high school days were not quite as happy as yours. And I didn't even have to wear lisle stockings.

snafu said...

Those were the days, no Comprehensive schools, School Cert and Scholarships and short trousers if you were a boy until fourth year and Gymslips for the girls.
I have always treated the phrase about school being, ‘The happiest days of my life,’ with some suspicion. It implies that after school things have to go downhill. I had fewer happy memories than good ones from my school days, although I had a very happy childhood in general. Since I left school, things have generally got better and some of the happiest days of my life occurred long after I left school. It was rather daunting if you were having a bad time of it at school and were then told you are never going to find anything better than that.

snafu said...

Those were the days, no Comprehensive schools, School Cert and Scholarships and short trousers if you were a boy until fourth year and Gymslips for the girls.
I have always treated the phrase about school being, ‘The happiest days of my life,’ with some suspicion. It implies that after school things have to go downhill. I had fewer happy memories than good ones from my school days, although I had a very happy childhood in general. Since I left school, things have generally got better and some of the happiest days of my life occurred long after I left school. It was rather daunting if you were having a bad time of it at school and were then told you are never going to find anything better than that.

MorningAJ said...

I remember it all - the beret, the stockings and the gym knickers. Only ours were navy blue! They were happy times. I agree.

Unknown said...

What years were you there? I was 1965-1968 before moving to Leeds. I missed the school terribly