Beauclerc School

Rivermead Island c1955
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I was a boarder at Beauclerc School in the 1950s and remember Miss Garlic and Miss Walters. Miss Garlic did everything - stoked the boiler (called Robin), looked after us, taught, issued the bills and weeded the garden. She kept tortoises and made the papers when she hatched some. The tree was a most beautiful old weeping beech, not a willow, which had a huge skirt under which we were forbidden to go. But we had a Boarders Playground, a bare area under some trees where we played endless games of "house" with sticks and pebbles. Ethel came in from the village to cook the meals, which were only seven menus, served the same days each week. I still have my ration and identity card for use at the school. On Sunday we all walked to St. Saviours Church near Sunbury Cross which was High Church with incense and a Father Judd in charge. There was an Angelus bell on the school terrace which was rung at noon every day. Also a room upstairs used as a little chapel for morning assembly/prayers. Mrs. Sirmon taught the younger ones and Mrs. Yarrow taught the older children. We were all drilled for the 11+ "The Scholarship".
When the day children went home we half dozen boarders had to mop the wooden floored classrooms out with O'Cedar oil which was in big orange tins.
Later on my mother and step-father came to live on the top floor, which when I was a child had been divided into cubicles in the largest room and was a store for huge jars of bottled snakes in another. We lived there as a family, with two babies born, until I was 15 (I went to Ashford Grammar School) and we all went to live in Wales.
When Miss Garlic finally retired she lived in a maisonette in French Street and I used to visit her and the inevitable poodle. I knew nothing of her background and wonder where she came from. She taught ballet and Scottish dancing, piano and painting - where did she acquire such skills? She was still coaching children privately until she was quite an old lady. It is a great shame that the old school was knocked down by a builder, without permission. I could draw the whole floor plan to this day if asked. And my love of gardening came I'm sure because we were all given a little plot against the high brick wall to the side of the huge lawn, and I grew a honeysuckle and a lilac. There was another colossal dark lilac on the lawn, the size of a large shed and it bordered the main earthen playground where we all went at break time. We weren't allowed onto the lawn, except on special occasions. At the end of the drive were the old stables and groom's house and a Mr. Rush lived in there.
Miss Garlic must have really loved children because we were mostly waifs and strays from what would now be called "broken homes" and indeed one mother left her daughter there and never came back for her. "Garlie" kept her, sent her for secondary education and looked after her until she grew up. Holidays were a bit tricky for me and she would take me to Margate or send me to stay with her sister in Burton-on-Trent if no other arrangements had been made.
I am pleased that the local authority school now on the site kept the old name. I feel the name Beauclerc is a tribute to those two indomitable ladies Miss Garlic and Miss Walters.