sanctuary school



The school was Quainton Hall, Harrow that transfered to Walsingham
in the early part of the war

The original school was run by Walsingham college

with the board of governers remaining as before


Mr Armitstead as Headmaster - probably 1952



1956

" Mr Armitstead was the headmaster of the school. That is he, fifth from the left in the third row back.
His wife is next, to his left, and then my favorite master, Anthony Prescott, who taught Latin and Greek.
Flanking them in the row are the dour Father Darley and the equally dour but delightfully buxom Saxon lass,
Miss Seebold "


More pictures


"The school at that time was run by Ken Hunter and his wife Joan,
who had been on a ship coming back to England where they had been teaching;
sadly the War had started and the ship was hit by enemy fire and Joan was severely injured,
leaving her paralysed partially down one side. Walking was obviously difficult and painful.
They were really good teachers, in fact were the only good teachers, with a few exceptions;
most of the additional teachers were unqualified, and were completely hopeless at teaching,
or anything else.

Ken Hunter was a great sportsman - we would play games three times a week in the afternoons,
and have school on Saturday mornings to make up time.

Saturday afternoon we would all go down to the village in crocodile to get our sweet ration
(sweets were still on ration), generally a quarter of a pound to last a week.

One of the masters, a Mr Squires, built us a terrific tree house in the grounds -
the only way up to it was via a stout rope which we had to climb and which we all learnt at great speed.
The first day the muscles of my stomach hurt so much I thought I had done some terrible damage,
but it soon wore off. We spent hours climbing the rope, or swinging Tarzan-like from it on the rope.

One day I climbed up on a high branch, rope in hand and launched myself;
at that moment a friend of mine walked into the wood, we collided with a
terrific impact both completely winded, and some very cross words exchanged.

When I joined the school we had class rooms at the building at the Friary, the other side of the village.
We all walked down in the morning, back to school at lunchtime, and back again to the Friary in the afternoon.

The ruins around us at the Friary were amazing to see, and retrospectively it is astonishing that none
of us was hurt by falling masonry from the wonderful old building.

Later we were to have class rooms at the school made from a converted stable block, all very smart,
but with no heating, which was extremely cold in the winter.

When the time came for each group to go to our dormitories,
Ken Hunter would do the rounds of all the dormitories at the
appropriate time before lights out and read us a story -
one of my favourites being Grey Owl books. Of course, years
later it was proved that he was not really a "Red Indian",
but who cares, the stories were great."


(more to follow)