Page 90 - Through a glass brightly

Lower VI forms were arranged alphabetically. VIB2 were upstairs in Tudor House, VIB1 Secretarial downstairs with Miss Gunnery, VIB3 were in a little room at the top of the High Street Block next to the Cookery Room and VIB5 - end of the alphabet - were out on a limb. They drew the short straw as they were miles away in a lab in the Lower Corridor and they got Margaret Smith for their Form Tutor (we had her in UVS and one year was more than enough.)
Gosh - look at me, Jenny Rees, becoming deep and thoughtful - and all this on the eve of what would have been our Commemoration Lunch weekend. Normally Mag Houghton would have come to stay with me, we would have had fish and chips and Prosecco for supper on Friday, then we would all meet up in school on Saturday, have a pleasant lunch and lot of laughs and possibly adjourn to Mag Peart's house for tea/supper and would finally have gone home with sore throats but a warm glow inside.
Friday, 15th May
From Janet at 10.27
Morning everyone - moving words Jen!
I still have the recipe for Miss Mayer's Belgian cake - it was certainly delicious and back in those days a change from our very conservative English cakes - do you remember the excitement when we found that pizza restaurant in Soho?
It is not all doom and gloom- there have been funny moments too - one whilst putting the black refuse bags out at the front of the house at 7.15 a.m. in the first days of lockdown (bearing in mind we live down a very quiet track but one which has become very popular during this time as it makes a nice circular route for exercise) wearing just my very flowery nightie and my lovely fluffy slippers only to be confronted by an early morning jogger trotting down the lane. We looked at each other, said a very English good morning and went our separate ways! I make sure I wear my dressing gown now!
Saturday, 16th May
From Janet at 10.13
Morning everyone on (what would have been the) reunion day -
Tudor House - was it really Tudor? If not when was it built and had it been a private dwelling? How and when did the school acquire it? When was it destroyed and was any of the interior kept intact? Is it now part of the school?
It is many years since I passed by Barnet High Street and I seem to remember it is now a lot of glass!
With a new programme in the excellent series on BBC2 on the history of a house coming up I could always do an ancestry/census check I know!
From Jenny at 10.30
No it wasn’t Tudor. Don’t know when the school acquired it but it had previously been a private house (of a doctor it is rumoured) Demolished not very long after we left as the school expanded and needed more classrooms and the tasteless Sixties glass cube was tacked on to the main school building. When I went back to teach in 79 I was based in the middle floor of this ‘glass box’ as it included a ‘model office’ and I taught Office Practice and Secretarial
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