Memories Of Fedsden Hall School

A Memory of Roydon.

I went to a school called Fedsden Hall, in Roydon in Essex, in 1950-53. It was a wonderful place run by Mrs. Katherine Clare. Mrs. Clare lived in a big, beautiful Georgian house on the property, with her husband, who I believe was a stockbroker or lawyer and commuted to London daily, and her five children. I’m sure she had five, although I can only remember the names of four of them – Tony, Roddy, Hazel and Moira. Hazel was my age.
It was my understanding back then that Mrs. Clare, who was extremely well-educated and had been to the United States to study the ‘new math’, had applied to home school her own children, and various other people had asked if she could take theirs as well, so the school was born. However, it was no doubt a much more formal beginning. I cannot remember how many students there were altogether, but there were only about a dozen of us boarders, and we considered ourselves the elite, looking down in our 10-year-old wisdom on the “day-girls”. We certainly had our own little clique - Hazel Clare, whom everyone regarded as the leader, Jackie Martin, Sarah Smith, Wendy Matcham, myself and maybe a few others whose names escape me after all these years.
I think it was Sarah Smith whose family lived in an old mill house that spanned a railway line. I have a recollection of going to stay with her one time and the express trains would shake the entire house as they roared through in the middle of the night.
The school had ponies, and students were welcome to bring their own with them if they wished. A couple did. We would ride those ponies at all hours of the day, frequently galloping across the countryside, two to a horse, between lessons. I don’t recall ever being punished for being late, but we weren’t late that often because we respected authority and loved the lessons.
We were taught by Dame Leah Manning, a rather frumpy chain-smoking lady of late middle age as I recall. We loved her, she was an inspired teacher. She was knighted for her efforts evacuating children from war-torn Spain during their civil war. Apparently there is a memorial to her in a public square somewhere in Madrid.
In addition to the three Rs, she taught us sewing and singing. We sang umpteen scales and two-part madrigals and such. One time, for some school performance associated with singing, we made a communal dragon, by dying sacks green in big tubs outdoors. One of the day students’ father made us a very impressive papier-maché dragon’s head.
In sewing class, we had to complete “samplers”, with examples of various types of stitching, hemming, buttons and buttonholes and other fasteners, all hand-sewn of course. After that we each made a dirndl skirt, while Mrs. Manning read the classics aloud to us. I particularly enjoyed Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. We also knitted ourselves school scarves in that class.
As far as uniforms were concerned, in summer we had to wear gingham dresses. It didn’t matter what style just as long as the dress was made of blue gingham. I thought that was such an avant-garde idea, to give us the freedom of choice. I don’t recall what we had to wear in winter, but I’m sure those school scarves included stripes at each end, with the school colours, whatever they were.
The matron at Fedsden was our beloved Nanny Pardue. It was not for many decades until I realized she was black, from somewhere like Jamaica. That kind of thing just never occurred to us. I’m not sure if it was she or Mrs. Manning that taught us cooking, but it is quite clear in my memory that the first thing we ever learned to make was macaroni cheese. The greatest part of cooking classes was that we got to eat our own creations, which was particularly appreciated when the subject was sponge cake, even if we had to beat the butter and sugar a million times by hand with a wooden spoon. Post-war England was very short of sugared treats and goodies.
Another skill considered indispensable was ‘house-wifery’. We learned how to mix chemicals to create solutions for washing hairbrushes (which in those days were made of real bristles on silver backing), and for polishing silver, and cleaning various other parts of the house. It was of course naturally assumed that one’s parents had silver table service …
We learned how to properly sweep a room (from the farthest corner towards the door), and the proper sequence of cleaning (sweep before dusting, because sweeping raises more dust) and other tasks. For some reason I also recall having to calculate how many dust sheets one would have to have in order to cover all the furniture in one’s main residence when one decamped to one’s summer cottage, no doubt along the Mediterranean coast or similar! It was painfully obvious to me, even at that age, that my family was not exactly in that league.
Memories! So many of the clear and wonderful ones concern Fedsden. We used to play in what we called the Greenwood, a wild area away from the main buildings. It was full of snowberry bushes and blackberries, and we would make camps there. We could just about hear the bell, an old hand-rung one, and would come racing back in when summoned. There were climbing roses all along a fence near the dormitory house and we’d play at weddings with the petals.
The dormitory house itself was a detached building. Everyone else had cosy eiderdown comforters, it seemed, except me. My mother saw fit to send me back with a tartan blanket. I was so envious of those girls!
One time we, the inner clique of pony lovers, schemed to take a midnight ride. We acquired some large pieces of carpeting, which we cut into squares and proceeded to bind around the horses’ hooves, before they were put into the stables at night. Then we scrambled out of bed in the middle of the night and, no doubt giggling amongst ourselves, took the horses out of the stables and climbed aboard, bareback and in our usual fashion, two-to-a-horse. One of them had cast one of the mufflers, so our progress through the front yard was pad-pad-pad-clop. We thought we were so clever, but I found out many years later that of course we had been rumbled, but the prank was allowed to go ahead. That was the kind of school it was.
On hot summer afternoons, after lessons were finished, we boarders were allowed to ride our bikes into the village and go swimming in the mill pond. Can you imagine a school allowing that these days, unchaperoned? We each took sixpence, because there was a lady who lived by the pond who sold slices of sponge cake for sixpence each, which we gleefully ate after we had dried off.
Another fun feature of the school was a thick rope suspended between two giant mulberry trees. We had endless fun on that rope, climbing monkey style along it, or doing tricks in the middle. We also used to play ‘donkey’ bouncing a ball against the outside wall of our classroom. Jacks was another of the crazes popular at that time, and all kinds of skipping games.
At the appropriate time we were all marched off to take our Eleven Plus exam. This was a national exam designed to separate children into those smart enough to go on to college or university and those who would be better suited to going into the trades. It was basically an intelligence test that was subsequently suitably panned and phased out. Many of the schools prepared kids for the test, giving them examples of all the sorts of questions that they would encounter, but Fedsden didn’t. Consequently it was the first time I had ever been asked to pick the odd one out, or continue a series, or tasks of that kind. I found it very intriguing and easy. I remember the last question was a short essay. We were asked to explain to an alien from outer space how to make a pot of tea! Good thing we were all little English tea-grannies, aged 10 or 11.
At one point Mrs. Clare offered to teach Latin to those of us who were interested. I was included and we had our lessons after tea, in her study in the big house, which had a roaring fireplace. We all felt very privileged, and I personally loved it. I went on to do Latin in High School and found it immensely useful in later life, unlike some of the other stuff that was obligatory in high school.
Because I was one of Hazel’s friends I was invited to go with her on her birthday to the Battersea Fun Fair in London. The Clares had a huge black Packard car, which reminded me of gangster movies, and we all piled into the back of this. There were six or seven of us and no seatbelts in those days. At the Fun Fair there was a new wooden roller coaster called The Big Dipper, which we were all super excited to try. It had just been opened in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain. The Big Dipper closed a couple of decades later after a nasty fatal accident.
In June 1953 the whole country went wild for the Coronation. In Roydon they had a parade, the theme of which was ‘from the first Elizabeth to the second.’ I was part of a group that made beautiful brocade coverings for the horses’ saddlery and bridles, and I rode in the parade, in costume. I also danced the maypole. Unfortunately it rained on June 2nd, and so we all slipped around the maypole in the mud on the village green and got impossibly tangled up. Every child in Britain got a coronation mug full of candy, and my Godmother also gave me a commemorative mug.
I was very sad to leave Fedsden, and it was rather a culture shock to go to a very straight-laced, formal girls’ boarding school to continue my education.