When did you start at PF?

I first rang the bell on the front door of PF in March 1973. I was in the middle of my teaching practice and was being interviewed by Mrs Hiles for the post of Head of History. When I started teaching in the following September there was a new young headmistress with many ideas and scant experience. My teaching practice had been in a tough girls’ comprehensive in Clapham, so I’d assumed I was going to enjoy a rather more peaceful year at PF. How wrong I was! To cut a very long story short, suffice it to say that when we all went off on summer holiday 10 months later, all but two teachers had signed a petition saying that if the new head didn’t go then we would. August was taken up with emergency Governors’ meetings involving Sir Andrew Huxley flying down from the Outer Hebrides - but the staff remained in post and the short-lived career of our young headmistress was over.

What did you do before you came to Prior’s Field?

Before I came to PF I had read history at Bristol University, followed by a PGCE at King’s London. My husband, Rob, was teaching at Charterhouse so PF was just around the corner. I had two stints of teaching at PF. I left in December 1977 to have my first baby, Francesca, two months later. Two more children on (Camilla and Alexander) I was to return, having taught at three other schools and colleges, plus a year in Australia. This was September 1988 and of course many things had changed and moved on since 1976. O-levels had become GCSEs with COURSEWORK; Mr Groves had graduated from being assistant geography teacher to head in three departments; the house system had been introduced; gym slips and girdles were no longer staples of PF uniform, but I was reassured to find that I slipped back into the very essence of PF: that caring, nurturing atmosphere which is such an enduring hallmark of the place.

What did you cover in your lessons and why did you enjoy it?

I think History is the best of subjects to teach, but then I am biased! I enjoyed teaching all topics and age groups, from Stonehenge with the first form to the Vietnamese war with senior students. And lots of other topics in between. One of my abiding memories is the reaction of Nicola Labram when I completed teaching the Cuban Missile Crisis. She put down her pen and uttered, “Why did I never know about this?” She then went on to say that she was going home to quiz her parents about why they had never told her about it! I was lucky to have some control over the content of the syllabus in those pre KS3 days. On one occasion Hilary Boston, then in the third form, pronounced that she wouldn’t bother to vote because there was no point. So, I instantly rearranged the curriculum and inserted the topic of Women’s Suffrage. It was a very popular topic and I hoped Hilary was converted!

What stands out to be the best memory?

I have so many best memories of my time at PF. House competitions were always a challenge, but Beaufort had some wonderful singers over the years; Henrietta Greaves, Bronwyn Coles, to name but two. And staff pantos! Mrs Knox was second to none in getting staff involved. Mrs McCallum was the queen to Mr Barnett’s king in our very first panto when the girls had no idea we were even doing one. She even had me dressed up in fishnet tights as Prince Charming to Ms Gibbon’s Cinderella!

Did you go on many school trips?

I remember taking my form to see David Essex in Godspell in London in the 1970s. The cast mingled with the audience on stage in the interval and we had lots of star-struck girls on the coach coming back!

In my second time at PF I started taking pupils to the First World War battlefields. Mrs Strachan led me down that path, and I never regretted it for a moment. The waves of girls I took over the years were all so moved by the experience: the seemingly endless rows of headstones at Tyne Cot, the Last Post at the Menin Gate, the trenches at Sanctuary Wood, the headstones placed side by side of a father and son who both died on the first day on the Somme, and finding the grave of a relative of our party and placing a red rose by the headstone with tears in many of our eyes.

So, I count myself so very lucky to have taught at PF. I couldn’t have had a more satisfying and absorbing time.

Rosie and Rob with their grandchildren