Description: Pam Vincent, the archivist of the Old Girls Association of Wimbledon County School for Girls, tells the story of the school from its origins in 1905 out of the Battersea Pupil Teachers Centre at Wimbledon Technical Centre until its amalgamation with Rickards Lodge in the July of 1969. Her narration is supported with archival photographs of the school buildings, school gardens, classrooms and by group portraits of staff and of pupils posed in their uniforms, grouped as sports teams, and in the theatrical costumes of their breaking up concerts. James Russell photographers of Wimbledon took many of the images, after being commissioned to take regular images of school pupils. One odd portrait from 1939 shows pupils lined up in gas masks standing on the school steps. Photographs of the school include records of the original school building on Gladstone Road and the new school building on Merton Hall Road opened in 1924. Developments on the Merton Hall Road site are shown with several photographs of the school assembly hall, gymnasium, classrooms, the playing fields, and wartime bomb shelters.
Comments
It almost ruined my childhood and early teenage years. I am not a. Intellectual and failed what were then the 11plus and 13 plus exams and was happy in the New Malden Secondary School where l could express my personality and creativity My mother, who worked in National education, had a Snobish streak. and she organized an interview with Miss Wade headmistress. Brief; l was accepted into the school.
There, l was relentlessly bullied by a group of girls the name of the ringleader of which l will mot mention though l remember it well. There is not space here to give more details, but, whereas the staff of the secondary school had been supportive of me and my artistic abilities and l was not punished for drawing all over my excercise books whatever the subject! I loved the corporal expression and even won a competition for creating a poster about the Highway Code. I wish l could go on, there is so much to say, but the years l spent at that school were the most traumatic of my life
opportunity to reminisce!