When I was seven years old, my parents, my sister, my grandmother and I moved from our London, England, suburban home to the County of Sussex, on the South coast of England. For my sister and I this was the greatest adventure we had ever had in our short lives. She was only four years old at the time. My Father had bought an older home in the small town of Arundel, Sussex, which had a huge back garden backing onto an old oak forest. To us children, it was heaven!
Arundel is a spectacular Sussex town. It sits atop a hill with the River Arun snaking around the flat water meadows below. The river ends its journey at Littlehampton, on the Solent, the strip of the English Channel which lies between the Isle of Wight and the mainland. After cutting through the Downs (high hills which separate the coastal plains of Sussex and Hampshire from the Weald - where London is situated), the River Arun meanders in serpentine fashion through water meadows and bucolic fields, inhabited by white swans and the occasional boater. It is above these picturesque meadows, that Arundel Castle arises over the top of the town - majestic and impregnable. The Castle is the ancestral home of the Dukes of Norfolk, the highest ranking duke in England, the Earl Marshall of England, and the only Catholic person to hold such a high rank in a country where the Church of England -(the Queen is the head of that Church) - rules supreme.
Arundel had two preparatory schools to choose from. One was the Church of England School (attendance was free) and the other was a Catholic school run by a Servite Order of Nuns, who lived in the castle grounds and did so at the discretion and pleasure of the Duke of Norfolk, who had four daughters needing an education and allowed these teaching nuns to live free of charge on his property in exchange for them teaching his daughters up to high school age. In order to make this a financially viable situation, the Duke allowed paying students to attend this school with his daughters and it became a recognized and legitimate preparatory school - for a fee. In his infinite wisdom, my Father decided that the best education he could give my sister and I, was at this school and so, after settling into our new home, I started at St.Wilfred's Priory Convent School at Arundel Castle in September of that year.
The experiences of attending that school are as clear today as they were when I first set foot in those castellated grounds! One entered the quadrangle via two huge gates, with great iron handles and iron studs. The buildings surrounding the quadrangle were only 3 stories high, but every window looked like a church window and the top of the buildings were all castellated. Our classroom was a large room with many windows on one side, and we only had gaslight to study by! Even in 1950 that seemed out of date! Our teacher - for all grades in one room - was Sister Paul, and she was very strict and quite stern. In my first week, I learned quickly who the Dukes's daughers were - of the four daughters, only two were still in prep. school - Lady Sarah, and Lady Jane. Lady Sarah was 2 years my senior and Lady Jane was 2 years my junior, but we all were friends and got along just like any other children of that age. In fact, I was once invited by Lady Jane, for tea at the castle! We played in the quadrangle at break time and did skipping games, hide-and-seek, tag and all the other games that young children play. The greatest thrill for me was when it was time once a week for the gym class. I was very athletic, and excelled at both track and field, and gym. Since the convent school had no room for a gymnasium, we were taken across the beautiful grounds to the castle itself, and we did our gymnastics in the Baron's Hall. This was an absolutely huge room with two massive fireplaces which a grown man could stand up in, and a balcony for musicians at one end. At the other end was a dais were, presumably, the Duke and Duchess could hold court from their throne chairs. I always remember the smell of that hall - polished wood, woodsmoke from the fireplaces, and a certain smell which came from the tapestries hanging on the walls, from the huge suits of armour standing in the corners and from the age of the place itself. To be there, just us small children and our gymnnastics teacher and his wife playing the piano, was almost surreal, but when you are only seven years old, you take it all in stride and it becomes a routine, like anything else.
Last year, when my Mother turned 90, my daughter Andrea and her eldest daughter, Sophie, travelled to the UK to spend a very special time with my Mother for the birthday. My sister very thoughtfully, took them to see the school where she and I spent our first years of education. It must have been quite a shock to my daugher, who had been raised in a Canadian environment, with new and modern schools with all facilities, to see where I had gone to school! The memories were shared by my sister - the lunches which the nuns prepared for us which were - and are to this day - pretty bad memories....so much so that my sister and I were among others who used a handy window to dispose of those lunches we could not tolerate! This was a valuable and memorable piece of the jigsaw for my daugher and I am sure that she will never forget that visit.
For me, as I watch my eldest grand-daughter entering the school system - she begins Grade One in September - it stirs up my memories of my first years of school, however, mine were definitely a totally unique school experience.
