Hazel sent this article to HLHS in January 2025. At that time she was hoping to revisit the former school buildings when she passed through Horley on her way home to Hertfordshire where she now lives.
Hazel was also kind enough to send a copy of the programme for the school’s production of ‘Make Believe’ by A.A.Milne which was performed in December 1946. Amongst the many pupils and teachers named in the programme are two brothers – Martin and Brian Buss. This Brian Buss is not the same person as the long standing member of Horley Local History Society, Brian Buss, who, with Richard Cooper, produced the definitive history of the school featured in a seperate article on this site. What a coincidence!!
It was uploaded to the website by Doug Cox in January 2025.
Hazel writes:
I went to High Trees Boarding School at Woolacombe, N. Devonshire, aged seven, during the
Summer Holiday, 1943, and stayed on as a pupil.
I remember at Woolacombe –
The girls, boys, and infants (up to the age of six?) lived in three separate hotels, and walked each
weekday morning in uniform, in crocodiles, to a fourth hotel for lessons. We also walked to church on
Sunday mornings, and to the tuck shops on Saturdays to spend our pocket money. I remember
exerting great will power on the walk back from the shops each week NOT to start eating my sweets
during the walk. Sometimes we passed the crocodiles of to the girls at Bartram Gables school, whom
we referred to as “Batty Gabblers”. I remember seeing gorse bushes everywhere on our walks.
Meals were eaten round several tables in the large dining room. Discipline was strict: you might not
refer to a “bit” of bread; I think you could be sent to bed for that offence. There was an American
army camp stationed nearby: they occasionally sent us dried bananas, and sticky lumps of candy,
which were put on our plates for puddings. For birthdays, delicacies might be posted from home, and
were to be shared with one’s table-mates. For one of my birthdays, my mother sent a large, stodgy
“fruit cake”, harbouring a few currents, and my grandmother sent what I recall as a cream sponge –
how obtained, I can’t imagine. The fruit cake arrived first and was started, and it was ruled that that
one must be finished, at my table, before the second could be served. By the time the large one had
been eaten, the second was found to have gone off, and was never presented at my table. I bitterly
resented that order of priority!
On Sunday evenings we had community singing in the large room opposite the dining room, with
piano accompaniment. On some evenings – maybe once a week – we saw some sort of films shown
on an epidiascope – mostly usually the adventures of Felix the Cat. We had to write weekly letters
home – a special time and place were set for this. My mother complained that each week my letter
consisted of a detailed account of Felix’s most recent doings, nothing about myself or the school.
I remember singing “Some day my prince will come” in what must have been a school production of
Snow White.
I remember visits to the beach, with the sand dunes, and coarse grass growing round them. Limpets
stuck immovably to the rocks – we would try so hard to prise them away, but couldn’t. We collected
cowrie shells. Jellyfish were washed up in the shallow incoming waves, and stranded; we would
cruelly cut them with spades.
Harriet and Adam Wolfit, the children of Donald Wolfit, were at the school at Woolacombe at the
same time as me.
When the end of the war was announced, and Victory, each girl was given a length of red, white and
blue ribbon.
Then I remained with the school when it returned to Horley in 1945. I chiefly remember there a piano
in a conservatory, with a view of much grassland, and Ingrid Hart impressing me by demonstrating
how the piano could produce different tones, moods. I also recall trees which we were allowed to
climb (which astonishes me now!), and having my first experience of sleeping overnight out side, in a
tent – very exciting!
I appeared in a production of A. A. Milne’s “Make-Believe”, in which every pupil of the school must
have taken part, produced by four teachers.
I remember some of the staff at Horley. Miss Jerman had a crew cut; I think she had served in the
WAAF, and told us of gremlins, which she insisted were real. Miss Down taught English, I think in a
Nissen hut; I greatly enjoyed her lessons. I think Miss Jerman and Mrs Hinselwood (who lived in
Felpham, Sussex, where my family lived) started a Girl Guides troop.
There was bullying – commonly rolling younger children down a slope in barrels, or into patches of
stinging nettles.
Susan Beaumont was my best friend at Horley. She had thick blonde plaits. She was the daughter of
Roma Beaumont who performed with Ivor Novello. Susan sometimes took me home to tea (where?),
and her mother would play the piano and sing Novello’s songs for us. I didn’t appreciate then what a
privilege that was!
There were two (German?) sisters, Bridget and Elizabeth Hackett. Their father was a prisoner of war:
I don’t know where. One morning his release (or escape?) was announced, to great jubilation.
