Schoolgirl's diary on life at Gartlet School in Watford

Lesley Dunlop’s article on Miss Lucy Sell and Gartlet School in last week's Watford Observer rang loud bells with us at Three Rivers Museum.

One of our recent donations has been the 1917 schoolgirl diary of the 13-year-old Elizabeth, living on a Rickmansworth farm, who was a pupil at Gartlet School: so we’ve had a look at what she said about it.

• The Watford school where pupils were 'soundly instructed'
• The Harmonious history of a Watford Victorian house

Her family were Cornish farmers, and came here in about 1910. But Elizabeth had come ahead of the move, and as an eight-year-old was a boarder at Gartlet for perhaps even a couple of years - we don’t know when she arrived, but she spoke later to her own family of going between London and Cornwall by train, quite an undertaking for a small girl. But by 1917 they’d been in their new home for some years, and she had reverted to being a day girl, travelling to school by train from Rickmansworth to Watford Junction – so a walk to the LNWR station, then at the other end up Clarendon Road to the school. She often notes the trains she caught – and the ones she missed.

Gartlet School tennis team, taken by Elizabeth and developed by herself. Image: Three Rivers Museum/Browne family collection

January 1917 was cold. Term, at Gartlet at least, was late starting, but on 23rd they were back, and Elizabeth had a new form mistress, who at once gave them homework! She started Latin this term, but a week later had ‘History detention’. School catering was a bit mixed, she thought – ‘Had a decent dinner at school for once’ was perhaps balanced by ‘had raw and fat meat at school for dinner’, but later ‘had a nice dinner at school for once’.

A page from the diary of Elizabeth. Image: Three Rivers Museum/Browne family collection

Elizabeth’s school day seems to have been rather varied: her class size was about 13 or 14, and she was normally ranked in the middle in most subjects, although she had ‘detention’ in a number of them. The curriculum was pretty wide ranging, and the list is as Lesley Dunlop suggested – algebra (‘beastly – hateful [exam] paper’), arithmetic, geometry (‘theorems’), history, botany, geography, scripture, composition, French, Latin, English literature (‘could not learn my Shakespear’) – and of course music. And they were examined in these subjects, and clearly expected to do well. ‘Prep’ was a regular feature as well as homework.

In the diary we meet some of the staff that Lesley Dunlop mentions, and others. Miss P.M. Parkhouse taught music (sometimes ‘v nice’, but once ‘came to see mother - the beast’). Miss Pattullo, who may well have been the form mistress, taught French, and Miss Goadby (we don’t learn which, and it may be that Elizabeth didn’t differentiate) runs throughout in a position of clear authority – ‘Miss Goadby translated German letter – we have taken Jerusalem’, presumably in an announcement at Assembly (the War doesn’t feature much). In the new term in September Miss Barker arrived to teach maths, H. Dawes drawing and Mr Lloyd to teach music, but minor hostilities with Miss Pattullo continued throughout (‘Miss Pattullo gave us a lecture on our bad behaviour’, and ‘Pattullo gave us an order mark in basement the cow. Had hard Homework.’).

Gartlet School netball team. Elizabeth is standing, left. Image: Three Rivers Museum/Browne family collection

Sport certainly featured at Gartlet. Elizabeth played hockey, cricket, tennis (‘against grammer school we won’), netball and athletics (‘I jumped higher than anyone 3ft 8’), and they swam at Watford baths (‘temp 67°F’). They did ‘drill’ as well, presumably as a gymnastic or dance discipline. Elizabeth doesn’t report any horticultural content, though.

And so the picture painted by Lesley Dunlop last week of a strong multi-disciplined school run by firm educationalists is supported by this one-year snapshot by just one of the pupils.

Elizabeth’s diary has been donated to Three Rivers Museum by her son, and its brevity and naivety has already allowed us wonderful insights into how it was to live, and be at school, round here. These records are really important!