Fairdene School

A Memory of Chipstead.

I was a pupil at Fairdene School from 1960-1965. I had lived in New York until I was 6, so being a girl with a Yankee accent in a school for young ladies was quite a challenge! The two female headmistresses, Miss Turner and Miss Delmege lived in a cottage at the end of the lane behind the main school building. They were like a good cop/bad cop duo - Miss Delmege was the strict one. I loved my ballet lessons with Miss Coates, a caring ballet teacher who walked with a stick as a result of an injury. While I was at the school there was a massive campaign to restore the Elizabethan barn which became the school assembly hall. One fund raising effort involved ‘buying’ a roof tile and writing one’s name in chalk on the back of the tile - I presume my name is still somewhere in that roof! Our uniform colours were navy and buttercup yellow: navy gabardine gym slips in winter and buttercup yellow dresses and wide brimmed sun hats in summer. The school had wonderful lawns behind the main building with views over the valley where we played outdoors in break time and on some lucky occasions had drama lessons outdoors enacting Shakespeare plays. The school used those old fashioned desks with lids and storage inside for your books and pencils - the lids were great places to hide behind from the teacher if you wanted to whisper a remark to your neighbour - or in my later years to stick my collection of Beatles pictures garnered from bubblegum packets. Happy days!