Our History in your Words

I realise how fortunate I was from the beginning of my school days. Going to school was a big step – education was expanding at that time, especially for women and the GPDST offered girls an education equal to their brothers.

I walked in a Women’s Suffrage procession through London – I remember how more than one man raised his hat as the banner passed along the Embankment. The tune of ‘March of the Women’ is with me yet.

The school fire was really rather an exciting event. How long would it take to rebuild? What would happen to us in the meantime?

9th November never passes without my casting a thought towards Wimbledon. Bumper celebrations accompanied the 75th birthday in 1955 including a service at Southwark Cathedral, we trooped there in a special train.

Excerpts from WHS School Magazines

The revolutionary spirit of 1968’s Parisian students was a far cry from WHS and many of the major changes were destined for the years after we had left. Changes there were all the same and the 1960s seemed characterised by a growing informality in school life… we had never been unaware of the vagaries of fashion, ruining many a pleated skirt by rolling it over half a dozen times in an effort to take the mini skirt into school life.

When I look back at my school days during the war, it is like looking through an old faulty telescope at the end of a seaside pier: tiny incidents suddenly leap into focus and then just as suddenly slip out of focus. So appear my memories of the wartime school days – tiny, vivid moments appearing in great clarity and as suddenly fading. Then there was the fire watching – a strange but rather delicious activity since it entailed treading in all the previously forbidden places in the school. We did our homework in the formerly unknown land of the staff room – and then down to the kitchens, another unknown territory where we ate dinner amongst giant sized cookers and draining boards.

But the war years from 1914-18 were a different story. We and the staff set up to make “respirators” for the troops in France. Where they went and if they were any use at all, we never heard but nothing could have given us greater sense of making our own small contribution to the appalling struggle at the front.

From year to year our onward course we take, Through strife and victory, through weal and woe, Making new friends, ne’er losing those we love, Still onward ever onward let us go.

Above us loom new fields to conquer still, Behind us are the heights already gained By those who bore the fiercest of the fight, That brave small band to whom so much attained.

Those who have led, and those among the ranks Who did true yeoman’s service with their might, All these we love and strive to emulate Keeping their mem’ry ever green and bright.

Onward we go, cheered by our happy past, Strong in our union of loyalty and love, To this our school, its memories and aims Then forward to th’unconquered peaks above.

WIMBLEDON HIGH SCHOOL SONG

Words by Miss M.H.Jemmett Music by Kitty Ramsay (later Duchess of Atholl)

Wimbledon High School, Mansel Road, London SW19 4AB 020 8971 0900 • info@wim.gdst.net • www.wimbledonhigh.gdst.net

The production of this document has been carbon balanced.