Open balconies bread and dripping

Launceston Grammar’s boarding history through the decades features an array of notable moments and memories. Of foul food, hypochondriacs and splinters, weakly boarders, merry maintenance men, coveted hampers, and the demand for girls to pursue an education with career choices slowly expanding. News from Launceston Grammar takes a look at some of these experiences for both boarding boys and girls.

Broadland Boarding House, rear view

Boys

The year was 1848 and an imposing Elizabethan structure greeted Launceston Grammar boarders; their new ‘home away from home’. Now the site of the Colonial Launceston hotel, the building initially housed the Headmaster’s family as well as 24 boarding students.

Memories for boarders of both the verandah and extension being bitterly cold in winter, are still vivid. A boarder recollects that the verandah was left open, with only a canvas blind to ‘protect’ the boys and their beds from the weather.

Fast forward 55 years to 1903 and the outbreak of a smallpox epidemic. The boarders were moved to the empty Horton College at Ross with Headmaster Wilkinson. During the four-month period they were at the college, food was in short supply and an appeal for donations went out to the local community. The boarders also received coveted hampers from home. Notations talk of playing football in the dormitory and wandering in the bush collecting flora and fauna.

With the relocation in 1924 to the Mowbray site, new boarding facilities were built. By the 1930s the boys were very much connected to the Tamar River with the School now overlooking Stephenson’s Bend. Many went down the bank and out of bounds to watch the Bass Strait ferry Taroona as she sailed past. The food, described as a ‘disgrace for growing boys’, included bread and dripping, and not much porridge and toast for breakfast.

The year was 1960 and The Launcestonian magazine reports ‘The Boarding House had an excellent year. Let all modern scientists take note – a miracle has happened – Boarding House meals have greatly improved’.

In the 70s the magazine’s Boarding House Notes of House Master Sorell warmly invites new Matron Jacobs into the role with a stern warning that ‘the fun starts in second term with a barrage of dirty sports-gear and outbreaks of anything from the common cold to Asian flu’.

Four-years on with reports in The Launcestonian announcing delightedly that ‘The standard of meals in the Boarding House has been exceptionally high due to the concentrated efforts of the domestic staff. Our thanks go to the Bursar, Mr Cooper, and his merry maintenance men for their efforts in updating the Boarding House and to Matron who has learnt to pick the hypochondriacs from the genuinely ill’.

And finally in 1975, ‘this year the upstairs corridors have been varnished and now fewer boys pay a visit to the Matron with splinters in their feet. As usual, this year, Mr and Mrs Ayers and the kitchen staff have maintained a very high standard of meals. Our thanks [also] go to Matron for comforting us through colds and other ailments during this year’.

Girls

Boarders were always a part of the fabric of Broadland House with Speech Night reports from the 1880s mentioning a Boarders Prize. The original Elizabeth Street house was not spacious and, as a result, boarding numbers were kept low. The move to Lyttleton Street in 1915 resulted in far more space for boarding students, who were also blessed with a tennis court and croquet lawn. By 1940 the School was home to 29 boarders ranging from 7 to 17 years.

Following World War II there was an increase in demand for girls to pursue an education with career choices slowly expanding. Increased enrolments saw boarding numbers rise to 75 in 1957. Full term boarders became the norm rather than the exception and while day girls remained ‘day rats’, weekly boarders came to be regarded as ‘weakly boarders’.

Conditions for the girls gradually improved. The Broadland House magazine, Latifundia in 1964 reported that some boarders were ‘now lucky enough to have foam rubber pillows, although hot water bottles were not allowed in winter’.