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Chesham Stories

Kathleen Winifred Flory (nee Webb) - Schooldays

Mother's sister Edith ran the local 'dame school' from the house she shared with her sister Minnie, for about a dozen of the offspring of local gentry - the doctor, solicitors etc and gave an excellent grounding in the three R's with insistence on accuracy and neatness. (This is where Kathleen started her education.)

After leaving Aunt Ethel's school I attended the excellent mixed school at Chesham Bois where, being of average intelligence and sporting ability, I passed an enjoyable four years - apart from the school dinners, with the horrors of blancmange with burnt milk and sour damsons! At first the three-mile journey to school was made in a shared taxi, and later by bicycle - uphill all the way there and a hair-raising fast descent on the way home in which we were preserved by the absence of traffic - feet up on the handlebars, no brakes - and the thrill of being one of the ER's, or Expert Riders!

When, at about 12½, I went to boarding school at Broadstairs (Abbotsford - headmistress Miss Parker Grey), I caused much amusement by saying I had attended 'Chesham Bois School' and curiosity as to why I had been sent to a boys' school. I was always interested in words and their derivation and have never regretted my brief acquaintance with Latin and I am sorry that it is disappearing as a compulsory subject from today's curriculum.

Mother's four children were fairly widely spaced and my sister Greta was in her last term at Abbotsford when I started there. She left to follow a musical career at the Royal Academy in London. I very much enjoyed the experience of boarding school and close contact with a number of contemporaries.

I realise now that it must have been a struggle for Father to keep us all at such good fee-paying schools, taken for granted at the time. I remember Father working until late into the night in his study at the top of the house at South View (Stanley Avenue), with sheets of facts and figures connected with the factory, personal matters and Church accounts, for he was Treasurer of Hinton Baptist Church ad the Bucks Baptist Association and other charities.

Of necessity, money was tightly controlled and Mother kept daily cash records of household expenditure. She strove mightily to keep accurate accounts, but eventually realised that a few extra eggs or tomatoes could be relied upon to balance the books. But if I wanted ('needed') a new dress or coat it was "You must go to your Father" and up to the attic I would go with my request, which was never denied - "If you need it you must have it, my darling" - and I would have such mixed feelings, delight at the prospect of some new clothes and a dawning realisation of adding to Dad's financial problems, and of tenderness towards him.

Kathleen Winifred Flory (nee Webb) 1909-1994.
This is an extract from some memoirs she wrote for her children. Kathleen was the great-grand-daughter of Robert Webb, who in 1829 founded Webb's Brush Factory.

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