feature “Our Rosemary” – Playgroups
The Melbourn All Saints’ playgroup – carrying on the New Zealand Plunket system One morning Rosemary dropped round to see me, just after her move to Melbourn, explaining she would like to open a Playgroup in the village, possibly in All Saints’ Church Hall, and could I help her. I readily agreed to go with her to look at the hall to ‘suss’ it out.
by Sylvia Beamon
I have only lived in Melbourn since June last year, after a series of misfortunes. First a broken left foot metatarsal, then a stroke and then a broken hip. Major Surgery and admission to four local hospitals, including the two for rehabilitation, were necessary over ten months. My whole life was to dramatically change. Later I was to hear of the untimely death of a friend of mine, Rosemary Gatward in February of 2020. In September 1961, my family and I moved from Mill Hill in North London, seeking a home in Royston. Hilary Lovell, the Midwife who had delivered my two elder sons, suggested that when I moved I should start a Parent and Social group similar to the one she had introduced me to. At the time, I was training to become a National Childbirth Trust (London) antenatal teacher in the up-to-date Psycho-Physical method, as used in the Mill Hill Clinic) I founded the Royston Retreat Parent & Social Group with just a handful of invited young women meeting in the lounge of our new house. I was a very shy person, never having seriously started a group, nor run a committee. It was years before I could stand up in front of people and read the minutes without my knees knocking together. The only thing I understood was the value of minutes (my secretarial knowledge and skills came to the fore here). At one of the Mill Hill group’s meetings a New Zealand speaker had explained their Country’s Plunket system for Playgroups. Hilary Lovell offered to be one of our first speakers at a Royston meeting. Rosemary and her family lived just around the corner, in the next road from us. At different times, she joined the ‘Retreat’; as the new group became known, my antenatal classes took off and, finally, the Playgroups (three ‘Home ones’ plus four in Halls opened). It was amazing how quickly we expanded. Obviously there was a need in the locality for such activities. I grew to know Rosemary well and really liked her. I also recognised she was a shy, diffident person, but most of all was always reliable and keen in whatever she did for anyone.
42
www.melbourncambridge.co.uk
Playgroups in the ‘sixties were a new venture for Britain. Private fee-paying nurseries were available; they employed a Nursery Nurse, to be in charge, and paid helpers to run them. Playgroups, however, existed on a “shoestring”, which necessitated that ALL the mothers took turns on a rota to help on a regular basis. Few tangible regulations existed then: no-one could join unless they were prepared to help. I had taken much useful information from the Plunket women before embarking on those new Royston examples. ‘Home’ ones opened first: eight mothers and eight children in each one or set, for two mornings a week, with two Mums in charge – the official ratio was one adult to six children but here we worked with one adult to four children. For Halls, it was 24 mothers and 24 children (3 sets), plus a Nursery Nurse or Infant Teacher. When Mrs. Burgess, an HCC Health Visitor and the first one to be assigned to work in Royston, arrived she
