The Scarlet Runners: extracts from the book

1940s

After exams, the senior girls did their bit for the war by helping with the harvest. Alison Blaxill recalls the romantic upshot: ‘One enterprising farmer had the idea of putting his Italian prisoners one side of the field … and the QAS 16 and 17 year olds on the opposite side of the field, so that we met in the middle. Well! We all had our first proposals that day. When we arrived the second morning there was a chorus of tenor voices singing love songs across the fields and when we met in the middle more proposals. The farmer had never had his peas picked so quickly. Miss Elliot came down to see how we were all getting along. She sat at the end of our long table – we all ate wonderful campfire food – and…said to a friend of mine, “Well, Elizabeth, how many proposals have you had today?” “Just three today, Miss Elliot,” she answered calmly. After that we were sent to pick cherries!’ Coming from Italian soldiers, such proposals were practically a nervous tic: the high-flown language of men who expected little from innocent girls.

1950s

When asked what they hated about the school, old girls often mention that punitive make-over, uniform. In the early days, it was yet another symptom of the wider cultural drive to make everything the same, but it took a while to settle down. Even the 1927 clothes list, though demanding when it came to colour and modesty, did not prescribe one particular dress or jumper. It was only later that girls were obliged to buy a more uniform uniform from a designated shop. Even underwear – now a matter of conscience – came to be dictated by the authorities, as Celia Haddon (1955–61) remembers: ‘Navy blue knickers over aertex knickers. The top ones not cleaned; the bottom ones cleaned once a week. Not allowed to wash our own smalls. Vests AND liberty bodices – nobody wore the latter. But we had to have them.’ Though designed to inspire communal loyalty, if insensitive to comfort and fashion the uniform had the power to do just the opposite.

1960s

Margaret Pears says they used to have séances under the wooden seating at the back of the hall; in 1968 she reported another effort: ‘Sally, Liz, Claire and I went up to my cubicle and had a séance. We put a glass in the centre of a circle of letters and the words yes and no. Then Kay called, Olaf, 1st King of Norway and the glass moved to the “yes”….’ And so on. ‘It was very weird but rather fun. Then I got into bed and did some more knitting.’

1970s/1980s

Manners were dominated by etiquette. At meal times teachers sat with the girls and enforced the rules that helped mark out a ‘lady’. It was wrong to ask for the salt or the water; right, therefore, to stay alert and notice your neighbour’s embarrassment. Not that the graceful swans of Queen Anne’s weren’t paddling away beneath the surface; ‘a gentle kick under the table’, says Helen Allan, would alert another girl to your needs. Allie Roynon (1977-82) had another tactic: ‘Wanting ketchup, I would ask my neighbour, whose fish fingers at breakfast were coated in it, if she wanted any … With my fingers crossed under the table, I would hope she would notice my sad plate and turn the question on me.’

1990s - Public Speaking

But the girls usually manage to fake spontaneity, as the Wilkins house book reported in 1992: ‘The vote of thanks was given by Carrie [Caroline] Ullstein, who was a bit nervous, but proposed the vote in a welcoming and sincere manner (although she knew the speech off by heart!!).’ Public speaking helped conquer nerves, as Karen Ip of Wilkins reported in 1992: ‘After a major “stress-out” just before we got on stage we managed to look “relaxed and calm” when we started. I chaired and opened the meeting (with my hands shaking!) and Blotty [Victoria Blott] gave her speech of “Britain’s questionable reputation as a nation of animal lovers”. It was a highly enjoyable speech…’. But you can’t learn answers to all the questions thrown at you from the audience. The head of Wilkins congratulated a girl in 1995 ‘on the fluency at which she answered the questions which were fired at her. I have never known anyone who can lie quite so naturally!!’

2000s

And the staff could be sympathetic when the girls got too hot. Janet Blaxill (1945-50) tells another story about Cara Gascoigne: ‘I remember one very hot summer evening Gassie calling up to the dormitories from the garden after we had gone to bed, “If any of you are still awake and feeling hot, come down to the orchard and cool off by lying in your hammocks.” We lay [there] in our pyjamas until … it was dark and the stars were out.’ Sheila Stocks, an ICT teacher (1995-2003), remembers a stifling summer day in a computer room. ‘Suddenly it started to rain outside. One of my sixth formers asked if I would mind if she could just briefly stand outside and let the rain fall on her. I knew just how she felt; so I said yes and asked her to be quick. When she returned she looked so refreshed and energised, and said thank you and quietly got on with her work. I knew it was an unusual request and an unusual response, but I think … it denotes the spirit of the place.’

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