Thorpeness School

A Memory of Thorpeness.

Does anybody still remember Thorpeness Junior Day School? It was situated in the right hand building of the Country Club. From about 1953 to 1961. My mother Dorothy Allan was the head teacher. My name is Bridget. We all sat in the same classroom, though the Nursery class was downstairs, run by a Mrs Mayor. We had assembly in the big Hall which had a stage and put on plays and dances there. We had our sports days in the grounds of the Country Club and one year we put on Midsummer Night's Dream around the pond that used to be there. At break times we were sometimes allowed onto the beach to look for exciting finds. The school children would all troop down to the hotel for school dinners. We had an art teacher called Mr. McGuiness and a dance teacher but I have forgotten her name.

My mother and I lived at No. 10 The Whinlands, next to the Dolphin Hotel. It was the hotel annexe and in the summer we used to have to go and stay with my cousins in the North because the rooms were let out to guests. I loved Thorpeness. I used to play out all day on the Common in front of our house. We would go up to the House in the Clouds and play around it. It was unoccupied in those days and locked up as it was just a water tower.

On Saturdays I would go and spend my sixpence pocket money at the village shop. On Sundays I would walk up to the church for Sunday School. I loved going out in boats on the Meare with other children. We would spend hours making up games of pirates, just like Swallows and Amazons and we would row around the islands and inlets. I remember Wendy's house and the wooden crocodile. I used to go and feed the swans. I remember one winter the Meare froze over and we could walk on it. It wasn't very deep so if you fell in it would not come up very high.

I would sometimes walk up to the Ogilvie's house, the Dower House on the headland and play with Mary, who was a couple of years younger than I was. Glenn and Georgina were older. My mother and I were well known in the village. She worked for Captain Ogilvie.

We left when I was 12 sadly but I have such happy memories. I visited 60 years later and found the village almost exactly the same which was wonderful. Just a few less trees around the Meare and more trees on the Common but otherwise much the same.