Extracts from 'My Days at Penrhos Junior' by Miss Kay Hassel
Bewildered by so many bells all through the day, a new young boarder got ready for bed clearly unhappy. "Don't worry," I told her, "there won't be any more bells till it's time to get up." Halt an hour later a matron rang an extra bell for the older girls to come in from the garden.
The child shot out of bed in a panic. I'm glad to say she soon became acclimatised to boarding school life, and her quiet personality shed a peaceful atmosphere among her friends.
The weather along the North Wales Coast was unpredictable. Often we had rain and cold winds when we had planned some outdoor function. One Sports Day in the early Sixties is a case in point.
Dark thunder clouds gathered before we were through the races, and we hurried as fast as we could to get through the programme before the deluge. And it came! We had barely got the girls indoors and the visitors safely away before lightning and thunder vented its anger on us. The lights went out, then came on again… and off again. At bed-time I remember Miss Robinson, who was on duty at the wash basins, calling out, "Hurry up and get your knees washed for Chapel tomorrow before the lights go out again!"
We had a number of storm lanterns to use in blackouts. They were particularly useful during the days of Edward Heath's premiership when we had the 'Three-day Working Week' malarkey. Boarders had to be given baths at odd times during the day when the electricity was on and the water could be heated. If there was no power at bedtime, there was a lantern in each bedroom and lines of girls had to be escorted to the toilets and wash basins so as to be able to see dimly what they were doing. I bought two oil lamps, one for the medicine room and one for my study so that I could mark books under a slightly better light.
It was at this time that we expected a new matron. Her name was Madam Bascher and she was from an aristocratic family in Germany, had been interned and had been in displaced people's camps in various parts of Europe. She came by train and I went to Colwyn Bay station to pick her up, but she was not there. Of course, this was during a blackout. It transpired that she had alighted at Abergele by mistake.
When I finally got her back at Junior we gave her supper and showed her to her room. It was rather a shabby room, although fairly big. I apologized. "Oh, this is a palace!" she exclaimed. "After all the camps I have been in, this is luxury indeed!"
I have an abiding memory of her, clad in her dressing gown, carrying a candle to go to the bathroom. She would choose a bathroom on the floor below where the baths were big. She used to turn the hot tap on, go back upstairs to her room to collect her things and then go back to the bathroom. She entered the steam-filled room just in time to turn the tap off before the bath overflowed.
As a matron she had little idea of our English customs. One evening when she should have turned off the lights in the Upper Ils' bedrooms, I found her teaching the girls ballroom dancing. The children loved her.
One snowy winter workmen arrived in Oak Drive to put in a new gas main. They dug up a lot of the pavement outside our property. By accident they cut the electricity cables. Along came the Electricity Company to do the repairs. Suddenly we found we had no water. It was about knocking-off time. I hared down the garden path to catch the men before they went. "We've no water!" I shouted.
"We know, we know!" the men replied. "We cut the mains by mistake. Don't tell anyone, we're trying to repair it!"
It was during these days at the end of the Autumn Term when yet another calamity befell us. We had arranged a show to be given in the Senior School gym and a coach had been ordered to take everyone down to College. The parents had all gathered in the gym. No coach. I tried phoning the coach people but the telephone wires had been cut. It was snowing. I went in my car to the gym to explain our dilemma. Fathers shot out of their seats, got into their cars and drove up to Junior to collect all the younger girls. Upper Ill were prepared to walk wearing their wellies and carrying their costumes over their arms.
When we were half way down the hill, the coach appeared. It had been stuck somewhere but had been unable to ring us. (No mobile phones, don't forget!) The children were magnificent. Such excitement added spice to their performances.
One favourite expedition was to Snowdrop Woods in the spring. When a lovely day presented itself, we rang for a coach, abandoned lessons and were driven along country lanes to Bodysgallen, looking at the lambs gambolling in the fields. It was such a treat to be out in the sunshine after weeks of gloomy weather. The woods were part of the Manor House estate. We paid a subscription to the local church and after giving the children strict instructions as to how to pick the snowdrops without pulling up the bulbs, and trying not to tread on the flowers, they were let loose (within limits!)
Back at school they made posies of the flowers. When we began to have day girls, those children took their flowers to their mothers. At this stage in our history we decided to take bunches round to all the Old People's Homes and Nursing Homes in Rhos. (I used to think of Colwyn Bay as Costa Geriatrica...sh..!) Several staff were needed to take car loads of children to visit two or three Homes each.
It was an eye-opener for our rather sheltered children. They were always welcomed with open arms. In one Home we were taken to the room of a bedridden lady who was blind and speechless. But we were told to take her hand and tell her all about ourselves and she would understand. The girls were very moved by this lady and her courage and serenity. Afterwards they said they would like to work in such a place.
A very bright girl invented the story of Miss Hovey's ghost. Miss Hovey was the second Head of Penrhos College. (Her sister, Miss E.M. Hovey, was the senior matron and she also became the first woman Mayor of Colwyn Bay.) There was a portrait of Miss Rosa Hovey in the College dining room and a copy of it at Junior. The girls said that, Miss Hovey's eyes followed you round the room.
The story of the ghost was that on 18th May (the date written below the portrait), Miss Hovey's head would roll down the back stairs, and blood would drip from a tap in the annexe bathroom. All the older girls were privy to this scary legend, but the new girls were suitably terrified.
The author of this tale later became a teacher; I suppose her vivid imagination gave her many ideas for compositions.
The Welsh Mountain Zoo was almost next door to us. When it was opened, with just a few animals, it was not very secure. The story goes that early one morning a milkman was driving along the main road when he saw two penguins standing at the bus stop.….!
As more animals arrived at the z00, stouter fencing was put around. We were glad of that when some big cats were introduced! But that did not stop some other escapees. As the children were going off for a walk one day, a couple of them knocked on my study door in great excitement.
"Miss Hassell!" they cried. "There's a parrot on the roof!" Sure enough, a macaw was there being mobbed by all the garden birds. I rang the zoo office.
"We'll come and fetch it when we've finished feeding the sea lions," they said.
Sometime later two keepers arrived. By this time the macaw had flown to an evergreen tree. A bucketful of nuts was rattled at the base of the tree, but the macaw was too wily to be caught that way. So one of the men climbed the tree while the bird peered down at him as though admonishing a naughty boy. Just as the keeper tried to grab the bird, it spread its wings and flew to the next tree. I could not stay to watch this fascinating pantomime as I had other work to do, but about twenty minutes later I heard a loud squawking and saw the keepers marching down the path with the bird in a sack.
Even more exciting was the escape of the racoons. At first there was just one on the loose. My bedroom was next to the fire escape and I was woken in the early hours one morning by a rattling noise which proved to be a racoon trying to get in. I banged on the window to scare him off.
When I rang the zoo after breakfast I asked if they had lost, a racoon.
"Why do you ask?" was the guarded reply.
"Well, I made the acquaintance of one on our fire escape at three o' clock this morning," said I.
"Yes, we have lost one," said the chap at the zoo. "Don't let any of the children go near it. Racoons look very cuddly creatures but they have very sharp.claws and one could rip the skin off your arm. When you see our racoon, ring at once and we'll come and get it."
The racoon was not so obliging, however, and raided our pig bins.
Then it tried Rydal Prep's bins, but came back to ours. (We said our food was tastier!) Eventually it was seen in our pig bin one Sunday morning, well before the Riser. The whole school was awake, looking out of the windows at the back of the building. The zoo owner had given me his home phone number and had told me to ring him any time of the day or night so that he could come and catch it. When he arrived a few minutes later, the racoon was still in the bin, poking his nose out every so often and then delving down again for another morsel. The zoo owner had brought a large butterfly net and he walked stealthily up the grass to the bin. Suddenly the racoon was aware of the danger.
The net came down but the racoon had escaped a second earlier. I could see the air above the man blue with words. That racoon was never recaptured and was in fact joined by his partner. How many racoons survived in the Welsh mountains, I wondered?
'There were foxes and rabbits and badgers. For many years we had red squirrels in the garden until the greys invaded. There were many kinds of birds including green woodpeckers, tree creepers, nuthatches, owls and all the common garden birds. The herring gulls which nested among the chimney pots were the most annoying. When the Nedglings were about to fly the sentinel adult would swoop down like a dive bomber, making for whoever ventured down the garden path.
