Girls grammars in the 60s (and beyond)

We were forbidden to take a short cut to school, as it meant passing a factory - again, we wondered why, as the young men from the factory often wandered along in their breaks, to watch us play hockey or rounders. It was the Caretakers job to move them back, from whence they came!

And reader ‘I married one of them’ who later became a Director of said factory.

Ha ha! Good for you. I don’t think anybody loitering these days would take much notice of caretakers or anybody else, if anything it might be dangerous for them to approach these people to scare them off.

More innocent times then.

We had extensive grounds and remember finding porn magazines in one of the distant bushes. We left them there for the owner.

There was unusual enthusiasm for PE one day at my school, young workmen fixing the roof.

My Girls Grammar was a newish build on former farmland. It had a public footpath alongside part of its boundary. there was a wide border of trees alongside it which was inside our boundary. Boys from the nearby boys Grammar school liked to walk along it during dinner break (we weren't allowed out at dinnertime). We were strictly forbidden to enter this little boundary copse and talk to the boys on pain of death.

I often wonder if it was realised that we met up in local cafes after school...

One girl in our year was practically expelled for talking to one of the young men working on repairs to a school building. She did actually know him 'out of school'..

We just thought it was ridiculous...

Our very small Girls' Grammar school was in the centre of London and was surrounded by busy main roads so it was difficult to tell if anyone who shouldn't be was hanging around as there were always crowds of people walking around. However, one day one of the 6th formers (who were the only ones allowed out at lunchtime and breaks) reported a man behaving suspiciously by the front gates, and he was still there an hour or so after lunchtime peering through. Our playground was at the back of the building so he couldn't see anything much.

Our PE teacher, a woman in her 50s and built like a Roman gladiator, rushed out and saw him off as my year watched from a classroom window! We never did find out what he said he was doing there!

There were allotments near my grammar school and a piece of wasteland we called ‘the rec’, we were told not to go there but of course some of us did.

At my single sex high school there used to be a collection of men, some with dogs some without, who used to peer through the railings at the bottom of the hockey field. We never took any notice of them or even acknowledged their existence.

I got detention and a severe telling off, because I was seen walking home in my school uniform aged 16 with a boy with his arm round me. 🥱

By the way I loved getting wolf whistles and felt very hard done by if I didn’t get one and I didn’t see it as an insult I saw it as appreciation 🙄sorry if I m so wrong

Every hockey game at my grammar school had men loitering by the fence "watching the game".
They were seen off by our fierce games mistress even if they were just there to see the game.

Silvershadow, did we go to the same school? My Headmistress used to warn us against “ undesirables” .

A classmate received a severe ticking-off for speaking to a workman on the construction site next to the school. He was her uncle!

There have always been "undesirables"... men flashing, "reading" porn in parks and woodlands, gangs of young men hanging about after school.

There are always warnings too.
I was told not to take the short cut through the woods to/from the bus stop but to walk the long way round. 🙄
Who wants to do that?

At the end of term someone from the boys school would have secretly hung a bra from our bell tower.The outrage! Their school was just next door but fraternising was forbidden.

Ha ha! I’m glad you’ve all joined in. A bit of light relief I thought. I’ve been a very naughty girl too…no apostrophe after girls’ in the title which I should have put in. 40 lines and a detention for me.

Our teachers and heads were, for the most part, Miss, plus one man, a vicar, who taught RE. They didn’t want our young minds being sullied. Boundaries were enforced. Gym skirts were worn, navy serge pants underneath, lacrosse and hockey sticks at the ready.

When I look back, it was innocent times, shades of Mallory Towers and the like. But we all had an excellent education from that school.

Fortunately we didn't suffer from "undesirables" in the vicinity of my girls' grammar school. When we got to the sixth form we were allowed out at lunchtime or if we didn't have a lesson, provided we signed out and in again. When the university opened nearby my group of friends went for a walk to see if there was any "talent" (we didn't see a single student!).

We also had mainly women teachers apart from two older men who taught Latin and Biology respectively. When a young man was appointed to teach English we were warned to behave properly! In fact, we all got on with him very well and respected him, although we did occasionally pull his leg.

I remember asking my mother what undesirables were and not getting any kind of answer!

I went to a strict single sex convent school. Had there been undesirables or desirables hanging about they would have been eaten alive! Dick Emery comes to mind at this point!

I was actively encouraged by the LEA to walk to school along a very isolated and overgrown footpath. For context, mum applied for a bus pass as we lived over three miles away - measured on the bus/car route. It was turned down as there was a footpath which cut out about 200yards of the total journey! I never did walk on that path.

The Girls Grammar School was at the bottom of the road and the Boys Grammar School at the top and never the twain did meet. Or so our spinster Headmistress and the Reverend Headmaster thought. Those of us heading for the bus station were told to use the pavements rather than the park which was frequented by the Grammar boys. In one ear and out the other.

Our school was built in the middle of fields and had 2 school paths for entrance/exit. One led down to the main road where you could walk a bit further on for bus stops. The other was a bit shorter and led to the road that bisected the local golf course - quite woody on either side. For some of us it was quicker to get home that way than the other path, the walk to the bus stop and then the bus.

Probably about once a year we were called into the hall and warned about a man "acting appropriately" along the golf course road. As we got older and bolder, one of my classmates (her name was Mandy but I won't reveal surname!) said, in a voice louder than she probably meant and just at the very second when the whole hall went completely silent,

"I'd have just kicked him in the bo**ocks".

Oh boy, poor Mandy was probably penalised more than the "flasher" would have been.

Once a week boys from the neighbouring boys' school joined our 6th formers for physics lessons. 500 girls would rush to the windows to catch a glimpse of these gods as they walked past.