Kindergarten at Parkfield School in Horsham was followed by proper day-schooling across the road at Springfield Park when I was six. Surviving term reports from 1934 tell me my class results varied from “improving” to “fair” to “very good” in - guess what? – reading and history. Now there’s a surprise. Again it was ‘Mr Linny’ who chauffeured me and my younger brother Rupert to school. He used to…
My father’s 21st birthday party on 19th August 1908 was a splendid occasion at Warnham Court, the estate in Sussex owned by my grandfather, most notable for the astounding array of ladies’ hats. Friends and relations assembled from far and wide to celebrate; and very likely to take advantage of the gathering of male family members to play cricket. Guests at my father's 21st birthday party. Cricket was a…
My mother’s photo album illustrates a tradition of summer seaside holidays, starting when I was aged two in 1928 and continuing to 1931. Successively at Sandwich, Littlehampton, Westgate, Alnwick and Broadwater, my younger brother Rupert and I ‘bathed’ at the water’s edge in the company of an inflatable rubber seal and look happy building sand castles with tin buckets and spades and sitting on an assortment of donkeys and…
Blogetty Blog 4: Caterpillars The caterpillar cages were an outstanding feature of our schoolroom. They have emerged clearly as I have dredged my brain for childhood memories, Made of plain unpainted white wood with glass doors hinged to open at the front, they were large enough to hold water vases for small tree ‘branchlets’: perhaps 18 – 24 inches square by 10 inches deep. There were at least two…