Correspondence with a poet- a pupil at St Joseph's Convent in 1939
My Convent closed back in 1989. It was only years later that it became apparent that items of the convent & school which had existed since 1901 were very scarce.In 2015 I found that out that the convent had a few alumni: actress Jean Kent, who only recently died aged around a 100 & did a TV interview, Anne Shelton a singer known during World War II. Sister Theresa was proud of both of them and would tell later pupils that she taught them.
Might be able to include myself if the acting career progresses some more!
Thanks to a poem about 'nuns in Hatherley Road' I found the award winning poet Fleur & her author sister Marilyn also attended from 1939 & Marilyn in the late 40s.
I contacted Fleur & here is an excerpt of our correspondence. I'll be uploading excerpt from an audio interview I did with a former pupil who took the nuns back to France too
This is part of the correspondence I have had with an award winning poet who attended the school -
Hello Steve,
Many thanks for this. Fascinating to hear that it was founded by three teenage nuns! I forwarded it to Marilyn, who was very interested; she sent me an e-mail of which part reads:
"I've got a beautiful letter from Sister Maria – copperplate handwriting and a pressed flower – posted 5th October 1947 and headed "St Joseph's Convent Sidcup". I saw Sister Maria (emphasis on the first syllable) when I visited in 1979. She was pretty ancient then, but still a lovely thoughtful woman. I think I do remember Sister Blanche and Sister Antoinette, who was tall and distant – taught us geometry. I always told my friends in New Zealand the school was called St Joseph's because St Gertrude’s (as our mother referred to it) sounded so silly."
I think she must be a little confused about the names if Sister Antoinette was actually only 4’ 8", as you say, but obviously she remembers the place with affection. She was 11 when she went there, and made a couple of good friends.
I went to St Lawrence’s a couple of times when I was 12 with two Roman Catholic girls, a little older than me, daughters of some friends of my parents. I was very impressed by the atmosphere and had brief yearnings to become a Catholic.
Best wishes,
Hello Steve,
Many thanks for this. Fascinating to hear that it was founded by three teenage nuns! I forwarded it to Marilyn, who was very interested; she sent me an e-mail of which part reads:
"I've got a beautiful letter from Sister Maria – copperplate handwriting and a pressed flower – posted 5th October 1947 and headed "St Joseph's Convent Sidcup". I saw Sister Maria (emphasis on the first syllable) when I visited in 1979. She was pretty ancient then, but still a lovely thoughtful woman. I think I do remember Sister Blanche and Sister Antoinette, who was tall and distant – taught us geometry. I always told my friends in New Zealand the school was called St Joseph's because St Gertrude’s (as our mother referred to it) sounded so silly."
I think she must be a little confused about the names if Sister Antoinette was actually only 4’ 8", as you say, but obviously she remembers the place with affection. She was 11 when she went there, and made a couple of good friends.
I went to St Lawrence’s a couple of times when I was 12 with two Roman Catholic girls, a little older than me, daughters of some friends of my parents. I was very impressed by the atmosphere and had brief yearnings to become a Catholic.
Best wishes,
More between myself & Fleur,
[Fleur writes]
The poem ‘St Gertrude’s, Sidcup’, is the second one in a sequence called ‘Schools’ mentioning most of the eleven schools I attended in England during and after the war.
We first arrived from New Zealand in October 1939, when I was five, and I was enrolled at Halfway Street School, Sidcup, near where we lived in Wyncham Avenue, but after a few weeks that school closed because most of its pupils were evacuated to the country.
My parents then sent me to St Gertrude's, to which I had to travel on a bus because it was some distance from home; I remember being there before Christmas and making Christmas cards;
I was also impressed by the slightly gloomy atmosphere of dark polished wood and the novelty of so many stairs (not a common feature of New Zealand buildings). In May 1940, when the blitz, began my younger sister and I were also evacuated (unofficially) to stay with some relatives in Leicestershire.
However, I'm now beginning to wonder whether I was mistaken about the name. We never referred to the school as anything but "the convent", which was an adequate designation in view of the fact that we were not Roman Catholics and this was the only such school in our experience.
Looking back afterwards as an adult, and discussing it with my mother, I discovered it was known as St Joseph's and St Gertrude's; when choosing a title for the poem in the 1980s it seemed logical to go for the name of the female saint rather than the male one, but a bit of research now suggests that St Gertrude's was the high school and that the primary school, presumably for both girls and boys, was St Joseph's.
All I know is that the school I attended was in a row of houses at the top of Hatherley Road, near the High Street; there is a photograph of it in ‘Sidcup: a pictorial history’, by John Mercer (Phillimore, 1994).
Perhaps I should mention that my sister Marilyn (the NZ novelist Marilyn Duckworth) later attended the school for a few months in 1947, by which time we had returned to Sidcup from our various travels
[Fleur writes]
The poem ‘St Gertrude’s, Sidcup’, is the second one in a sequence called ‘Schools’ mentioning most of the eleven schools I attended in England during and after the war.
We first arrived from New Zealand in October 1939, when I was five, and I was enrolled at Halfway Street School, Sidcup, near where we lived in Wyncham Avenue, but after a few weeks that school closed because most of its pupils were evacuated to the country.
My parents then sent me to St Gertrude's, to which I had to travel on a bus because it was some distance from home; I remember being there before Christmas and making Christmas cards;
I was also impressed by the slightly gloomy atmosphere of dark polished wood and the novelty of so many stairs (not a common feature of New Zealand buildings). In May 1940, when the blitz, began my younger sister and I were also evacuated (unofficially) to stay with some relatives in Leicestershire.
However, I'm now beginning to wonder whether I was mistaken about the name. We never referred to the school as anything but "the convent", which was an adequate designation in view of the fact that we were not Roman Catholics and this was the only such school in our experience.
Looking back afterwards as an adult, and discussing it with my mother, I discovered it was known as St Joseph's and St Gertrude's; when choosing a title for the poem in the 1980s it seemed logical to go for the name of the female saint rather than the male one, but a bit of research now suggests that St Gertrude's was the high school and that the primary school, presumably for both girls and boys, was St Joseph's.
All I know is that the school I attended was in a row of houses at the top of Hatherley Road, near the High Street; there is a photograph of it in ‘Sidcup: a pictorial history’, by John Mercer (Phillimore, 1994).
Perhaps I should mention that my sister Marilyn (the NZ novelist Marilyn Duckworth) later attended the school for a few months in 1947, by which time we had returned to Sidcup from our various travels
Part of one of my letters to her -
The ambiance of the school, its aesthetics & all the statues and paintings everywhere
Instead of Catholic dogma the emphasis was on the spirituality and the drama & ceremony of religion- I believe it's one of the reasons I became an actor.
That not many schools have a chicken range and small farm area!
The nuns attitude that you should be whatever you choose to be: scientist, artist, writer or poet they never discouraged aspirations & some pupils went into the sciences encouraged by Sister Denise's enthusiasm. I've ended up as a writer, artist (less good at that), actor & trained in the sciences!
The "slightly gloomy atmosphere of dark polished wood" was still very present at the school in the 70's & 80's.
The polished wood was largely done by us boys! It was a 'punishment' for 8 to 11 year olds to tie dusters to our feet and then slide on the floor to polish them. Boys being allowed to slide around is hardly a punishment.
The name is confusing:
There's a photo from 1902 which shows the school name as:
English-French School
Then a few years later another photo:
St Josephs Convent and School
then they added the St. Gertrudes for secondary school girls
Finally around 1960 it all became:
St Josephs Convent
Of the nuns you and Marilyn might remember, there are some that I knew too over 30 years later:
Sister Marie-Claire (Marie Villete) who was the 17 year old founder in 1901 , I knew her until her death on 17 October 1979 on the morning of her 95th birthday.
She was joined in 1901 by two 18 year olds, Rosalie Noel &
Anna Benchard. Three teenage nuns being sent to a foreign country to create a school and convent has impressed many former pupils. Sister Blanche Torville came around 1907 & was still there around 1970. Sister Emanuelle retired back to the motherhouse in Briouze in Normandy in 1977.
Two nuns who were teaching in the 1940's were Sisters Antoinette and Denise. They and the others returned to France in 1989. Sr. Antionette was the 4'8" teacher of the infants class and also did needlework and maths. She was still alive at the age of 98.
Sr. Denise taught French and Spanish and was probably the tallest of the nuns. Unlike the others she wore all black; none of us know why she didn't wear a blue habit like the others.
Like you I'm not Roman Catholic. My sister (different mother) & my Irish grandmother et al were all R.C. but my mother is Christian Spiritualist and my father although baptised Anglican was aligned with the Quakers. I chose St Josephs because something 'felt right'
I'm researching the Convent & it's connection with St Lawrences in order to preserve the cultural & oral history, which are so often lost by not being recorded.
With regards to St Lawrences, our Mass day was every Tuesday morning being trooped through the High Street to the church.
The ambiance of the school, its aesthetics & all the statues and paintings everywhere
Instead of Catholic dogma the emphasis was on the spirituality and the drama & ceremony of religion- I believe it's one of the reasons I became an actor.
That not many schools have a chicken range and small farm area!
The nuns attitude that you should be whatever you choose to be: scientist, artist, writer or poet they never discouraged aspirations & some pupils went into the sciences encouraged by Sister Denise's enthusiasm. I've ended up as a writer, artist (less good at that), actor & trained in the sciences!
The "slightly gloomy atmosphere of dark polished wood" was still very present at the school in the 70's & 80's.
The polished wood was largely done by us boys! It was a 'punishment' for 8 to 11 year olds to tie dusters to our feet and then slide on the floor to polish them. Boys being allowed to slide around is hardly a punishment.
The name is confusing:
There's a photo from 1902 which shows the school name as:
English-French School
Then a few years later another photo:
St Josephs Convent and School
then they added the St. Gertrudes for secondary school girls
Finally around 1960 it all became:
St Josephs Convent
Of the nuns you and Marilyn might remember, there are some that I knew too over 30 years later:
Sister Marie-Claire (Marie Villete) who was the 17 year old founder in 1901 , I knew her until her death on 17 October 1979 on the morning of her 95th birthday.
She was joined in 1901 by two 18 year olds, Rosalie Noel &
Anna Benchard. Three teenage nuns being sent to a foreign country to create a school and convent has impressed many former pupils. Sister Blanche Torville came around 1907 & was still there around 1970. Sister Emanuelle retired back to the motherhouse in Briouze in Normandy in 1977.
Two nuns who were teaching in the 1940's were Sisters Antoinette and Denise. They and the others returned to France in 1989. Sr. Antionette was the 4'8" teacher of the infants class and also did needlework and maths. She was still alive at the age of 98.
Sr. Denise taught French and Spanish and was probably the tallest of the nuns. Unlike the others she wore all black; none of us know why she didn't wear a blue habit like the others.
Like you I'm not Roman Catholic. My sister (different mother) & my Irish grandmother et al were all R.C. but my mother is Christian Spiritualist and my father although baptised Anglican was aligned with the Quakers. I chose St Josephs because something 'felt right'
I'm researching the Convent & it's connection with St Lawrences in order to preserve the cultural & oral history, which are so often lost by not being recorded.
With regards to St Lawrences, our Mass day was every Tuesday morning being trooped through the High Street to the church.
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