Holt! Old school pals plea
YOU had an item in recently about a proposed get-together of girls, either from the Sixties or in their 60s, attending Abbeydale Grammar School for Girls.
Some years ago, a Mrs Diane Saunders wrote from Spain asking for a penpal when she had seen a reported fire at our old Holt House. Although not of her generation, it appeared that I was the only one to answer, and we have been staunch friends since.
To bring you up-to-date, I am an old girl from 1931-36, and then we had two, what my mother called gentlemen's houses converted - School House and Holt House - with huge gardens between, lawns, a wood leading to a playing field, a short drive full of rhododendrons, and a long one full of trees; a verandah suitable for Romeo and Juliet and a monkey puzzle tree. Even the hut to house assemblies, midday meal and gymnastics, didn't damp my ardour for this heaven. Those of us in the upper fifth went on to the commercial college in Psalter Lane.
I know my special friend, Dorothy Harness, has died but, where is Ivy Barker, Marjorie Hartle, Beatrice Wood or, that irrepressible one, Marion Snelgrove who, in spite of being the granddaughter of an alderman, was up to all sorts of tricks, like climbing on to the roof. I only managed leader of the black hand gang and instigator of the killing of a plague of flies in our third year. The walls were so covered with dead bodies and blood, that the decorators were called in during the holidays and our exercise books had to be destroyed! Good job physical punishment was not allowed!
Because of my own age, I am not expecting there to be a lot of our generation still alive, but it would be wonderful if there were. Now, is that proper grammar, or would our special mistress in charge of that, Old Tut, as we called her after the famous pharaoh, would certainly correct me.
My name then, by the way, was Vera Swift, and I was the one with patched gymslip, holey black stockings and worn-down shoes. Well, what can you do when your dad is in and out of hospital with a broken leg that will not heal?
Mrs Vera Percy, Hoole Road, Sheffield S10.
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
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