IMDB has the wrong year as my birth. If it was that year I would not have attended the naval college in Greenhithe as that closed a year after St Joseph's Convent. When I was there 87-88 the place was spiraling straight towards closure. We were threatened with immediate expulsion if we entered the shamefully neglected and dilapidated Ingress Abbey which stood next to my halls of residence.
Surrounded by corrugated sheeting this rather impressive manor house of Gothic and Moorish influences did not look the place that had stood opposite Queen Victoria entertaining the Shah of Persia and others in order to gain influence by seducing them with the then beauty of Greenhithe.
Best thing that happened to Ingress was my college closing in 1989! Property developers then moved in who have subsequently got a little megalomaniacal but they repaired the Abbey albeit in a generic style not befitting its former granduer.
Luckily a geological engineer and his wife, a singer, purchased Ingress Abbey and have made great improvements in restoring the house to its nineteenth century condition. When I was in the Abbey with classmates and not giving a damn about threats of expulsion, the place was such a mess that I turned back after banging my head a few times in the near dark. The others ventured further to what could be called a 'ballroom' actually simply a very large lounge on the first floor with moldings on the wall, or in 1987: no floor and mould on the moldings.
A couple of weeks ago I returned to Ingress to tell them about the college and what the place used to be like, about to fall down in parts. Ingress Abbey is now impressive, there is a memorial to the naval college & the squadron, however it focuses on the Worcester and not the other ships or the earlier ship that was part of the college that fought at the Battle of the Nile as demonstrated by the college's Roll of Honour.
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