catching up with old girls
Diana MacFadyen Class of 1947
née Cummings
A
fter leaving RMS, Diana worked as a housekeeper for an artist based in Oxford. She was allowed to use their art studio alongside her household duties. After seeing her paintings, the artist who owned the house suggested she apply to art school. Diana excelled as an artist. Here she gives a modest rendition of her time at the School and her life’s achievements. I was seven years old when I joined RMS. I went to Weybridge first of all, I was there just before the war and I enjoyed that as a little girl. I moved to Rickmansworth and was in Connaught House, the first one on the Garth in those days (now Hind House). While I was there, the war came and that made everything very difficult. It was quite scary with the air raids, we used to go to bed holding our breath, listening out for the doodlebugs. They were being dropped at night and we used to lie in bed listening to them. We knew that when the droning of a doodlebug stopped, it was going to drop. We were all rather nervous. The staff were very impressive with the way they coped. It was a very worrying time not knowing when a bomb was going to drop. We felt vulnerable and the staff must have felt vulnerable looking after us too. I think they managed extremely well looking after the safety of all these children. The air - raid shelters were awful. We had to go there and it was quite a long way for us to walk as our house was the furthest away. Sleeping on benches in the shelters was very uncomfortable. In the mornings we had to get back to the houses early and get ready for school. It was very cold, but we had to put up with it. We slept so
16 | Masonica 2021
poorly in the shelters and it became very disruptive. Eventually they decided we should sleep in the corridors instead, which were less dangerous than our dormitories as they were away from any windows. I remember not being able to go home to my mother in London because of the bombs. On one particular holiday when I wasn’t allowed to go home, a girl who came from Wales got in touch with her family and arranged for me to go to her home for Christmas. It must have been so awful for our parents to be away from us at that special time. I have very fond memories of Prize Day. I learnt the piano with my housemistress, Miss Hudson, and can still play the piano now. On Prize Day there were eight pianos in the Great Hall, and two girls playing a duet on each piano for Drill. I was one of those playing and I remember enjoying that tremendously. It was such fun. After I left school, I made up my mind that I wanted to go to art school; I wanted to go to a particular art school, which was the Slade,
