1 minute read
Foreword
This is a truly wonderful collection of memories of life at The Royal Masonic School for Girls. We hear of life in a 1940s boarding school, including of pupils’ favourite meals (which was Roast in 1940, just as it very much remains Roast in 2020), of girls getting ‘kitted out’ in ‘itchy uniform’ (not something that current pupils could relate to, I’m sure) and of Matron inspecting lockers in search of the contraband of the day (which was strawberry jam, apparently!).
As social history, the book reconstructs the experiences of ordinary girls at a time of great social change. The war is naturally at the heart of most memories. We hear of girls arriving at Rickmansworth to escape life in London, of going out potato picking to help with the harvest, and of an enemy aircraft crashing on a nearby hillside. While there are tales of ‘bonfires and great festivities’ for VE Day, the accounts are not necessarily misty-eyed recalling blue remembered hills. The reality of day-to-day school life is captured superbly in all of these anecdotes, and in some of the tales of nights in ‘the trench’ (as RMS pupils then referred to the air-raid shelter), we are provided with no small degree of olfactory detail.
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Of course, these are not just the memories of any boarding school in the 1940s. These are memories of The Royal Masonic School for Girls, a very special and distinctive place indeed. The long history of our school gives it a particularly strong personality, and this comes across as we hear of the special events in the annual life of RMS such as Prize Day, Sports Day and, of course, Drill. It is heart-warming to know that so many have treasured these traditions for so long.
Pupils at our school must always have the confidence to have their voice heard, but RMS girls are always downto-earth and appreciative of all they experience. ‘I shall be forever grateful for the opportunities I was afforded at Rickmansworth’, one pupil recalls. Likewise, I am deeply grateful to all of the contributors for this collection of memories which are so fascinating to read.
