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Chesham Stories

Gwenyth Hill - Townsend Road School Junior Girls School, Autumn 1941 - Summer 1943

Miss Dorothy Reynolds was my teacher for my time at Townsend Road School. She had two school years to manage in the same room. This room was divided by a partition which was, I think, sometimes folded back to join us with another large class, usually for a musical event. I remember a visiting cellist performing 'The Swan' from Saint-Saens' 'Carnival of the Animals'. Another musical memory is of a Schools' broadcast; Smetana's 'Iltava', and being taken descriptively down river from source to sea.

Miss Reynolds had a good singing voice and introduced us to part singing and recorder playing in which we reached a pretty good standard. Her sister Millie was an excellent pianist and came to our house in later years to play piano and cello music with my father, Harry East. Some children had violin lessons.

We took the entrance exam to Amersham Grammar School and were allowed two opportunities; one at ten years old and again at eleven. The ground work teaching was excellent and I recall no discipline problems despite there being evacuees and refugees, some with Jewish faith, at the school. We chanted 'tables' daily and just got on with the work.

Two pupils sat at each wooden desk with a shared tip-up seat and individual opening lids for our books. There was a groove for pencils and a regularly topped up inkwell for our school pens.

P.E. [physical education] was exercises, rounders and netball in the playground wearing our normal clothing. Sometimes we had country dancing in the Hall, and swimming lessons 'down the Moor' were an option.

Miss Hawkes was the Headmistress, and Miss Wheeler the teacher of the junior class. I left after the first entrance exam so was never in her class. From a distance she commanded respect and I hoped never to need her St John's Ambulance skills as she was renowned for the painful use of iodine on cuts. We had to pass through her room on our way to the Hall as there was no corridor. The use of the Hall was not frequent, however. There was no school assembly and everything took place with the one teacher in the same room.

There were 'blast walls' in front of the entrances and a beautiful red May tree (hawthorne) in the corner of the playground where Townsend and Bellingdon Road meet. We had a May Queen and dancing round a maypole which had to be steaded by several children.

It was an all girls school, Newtown Infants having been mixed.

Gwenyth Hill (née East)

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