Bell baxter lives section I former Pupils Contents

James C Halliday

Mona Halliday

Lesley Hancock

Lesley Hancock, who was a pupil in sixth year in 1968, spent two years in a girls' High School in Kent. Researchers for the 1968 School Magazine editorial staff (Jennifer Tresize, Mary Eagles and Fiona Ewen) asked her for her views on school uniform and co-education.

Uniform? Well, in the winter, if you were in the first or second year you had to wear a gym-tunic, a white blouse and navy-blue knickers and a strap purse, but you were not allowed to wear coloured underwear or lacquer your hair. When you got to the elevated heights of the third year, you were allowed to wear a skirt; only the skirt had to be made to a certain pattern and it consisted of about eight panels and so was rather flaired. It was rather long because you weren't supposed to show your knees. You could also wear stockings to school, provided they were brown and not black or patterned. You could get away with coloured undies in winter when you wore your school jersey, but in summer they showed through the dresses. Everybody wore the same summer dresses which were of three colours: pink, green and oyster — which was a sort of dirty-looking beige.

We had different hats for summer and winter. In winter, you wore a navy-blue, felt hat which you sort of stood on, sat on and folded up. The great art was to fold your hat in half, then in half again and sit on it without sitting on the badge, because that was rather unpleasant. In summer you wore a white straw hat which was a sort of dirty yellow and looked like a bowler because it didn't come out right. But you couldn't fold them — they were sort of the unsquashable type.

I think the main reason for the uniform was the headmistress — she wanted to run a sort of girl's public school. I think she aimed at producing the Young Lady; a prototype of her, I suppose. She didn't really achieve it because everyone laughed at the rules and broke them — we had to put make-up on to go home with - hastily putting on your lipstick and mascara.

You could go home by bus or train but most people went by train because the boys from the nearby grammar school went by train. In the buses it was mainly just girls — we didn't use the buses very often.

I had a few boyfriends, but I didn't get to know Boys well, if you see what I mean — I didn't know lots of boys. You weren't supposed to have boyfriends meeting you from school — that was frowned on: so you met them round the corner, or something. But we used to rave over the gardener — that's the stage it got to, you see — raving over the gardener. And he got the sack in the end because one of the girls started going out with him. My friend had a great crush on him; she used to write letters and things, but mostly he was something to be admired from a distance.

I was scared stiff when I first came to Bell Baxter. Well, I didn't know that it was co-educational until I arrived, you know, and saw these boys walking around. I was rather green at the time. I didn't know how to behave or anything. If a boy had spoken to me, I'm sure I would have burst out into tears. And I suddenly got taken up to this classroom with about fifteen boys sitting staring at me. I've never been so embarrassed in my life. But it soon goes: for you can't afford to be embarrassed with the lot you've got here: you've got to learn to stand up for yourself.

I think that's necessary, because if you're at a school where there's just some girls and you go to university or some place like that — right in the midst of them — you meet all the horrors and all the nice ones, and you fall into some of the traps the horrors lay. But here you learn to distinguish between the horrors and the nice ones — and I think that's necessary for a girl. And you've got to learn to relax with boys and be able to talk to them as people without thinking ‘Oh boy, I'm talking to one of THEM.’