Mother's solicitor, always referred to by us as Charlie Steele, had been a lifelong friend of my father. In advising us he was very anxious that we should not be upsetting any local susceptibilities. Eleanor called on the Rector to ask if there was an opening in the village for a girls' school and he assured her we should be received with open arms. There was only the church school to serve the neighbourhood and the one or two little girls belonging to families in Great Bookham were taught by a governess. I called on the Headmaster of Southey Hall to find out if he would have any objection to having a girls' school adjoining. From the beginning, our relations were most friendly and when later our numbers increased his daughter became our first assistant. In the years that we had the school a number of our little boys went to Southey Hall when they reached the age of 71/2 or 8 years old.

We moved in on March 28th. Mother and Eleanor took me down the night before to stay with the Snoads and so to be on the spot next morning when the furniture arrived. I wandered about the empty house doing odd jobs here and there and I remember sitting on the bench in the porch to eat a picnic lunch and feeling relieved that it was not a place where families had lived and where perhaps there had been a death. Except for the couple who had first converted it and the Rothans from whom we bought it, the inmates had been cows. Bella Snoad was surprised that I was not bubbling with excitement but curiously enough I felt a little sad. I had no idea of the happiness the years would bring me and even more of the contacts which would remain with me in after years. It may have been a premonition of the death of my own hopes which, and this I did not realise, led to the birth of a new understanding and sympathy with others.

In the afternoon when the furniture arrived Eleanor was in one of the rooms upstairs and looking out of the window saw a little fair-haired girl of about two years old come running in at the wide-open five barred gate. She called out: 'Oh here comes our first little pupil.' Her mother hurried after her and took her out and apologised. Two years later at the beginning of the autumn term she brought her along one morning and said she was bringing her for half a term on trial if we would have her as she could do nothing with her.

She stayed with us for five years and in latter part of the time was a boarder before going g to St Paul's school at the beginning of the war. When I was buying my cottage here in Charlton Adam 1 asked her husband who is a builder in Castle Cary to come and survey it for me. He did so and the ideal home in which I live is the result of his work. Madeleine and her two girls visit me occasionally. She always maintains that she was our first pupil, coming in on the day we moved in.  

Our first pupil was Anita. Her father was in the Ministry of Education and they lived in Fetcham the next village to Bookham. There was nothing but the village school and when Anita reached the age of seven they were thinking of selling their home when our prospectus was dropped was dropped through our letter-box. They came to see The Spinney and though we were not there at the time they it was just the place for Anita. Although she was the first pupil to be enter it was actually Vera who was first in the school the day we started as Anita and her mother had mistaken the time of the bus and so were late. We opened on Tuesday April 28th. It was a little early as other schools had not yet begun their summer term but we were anxious to get started and our two little pupils were also very anxious to begin. They were both of them keen and eager to learn and it set the tradition that lasted all the time we had the school. Vera as the elder (by one year) was head girl and remained so all the time she was at The Spinney. It was she who rang the bell before prayers and at the beginning and end of 'break' and it was never late and never disregarded. During the war no bells were allowed so whoever was on duty used to call out 'The bell has rung,' and everybody came back to work at once. There was no question of 'law and order,' it was just automatic. At the boys' school adjoining us the head master used to call out 'All in' and in seconds the playing field was cleared.

The two children were joined by a third little girl at half term but she was only there temporarily as her parents (her father was Italian) moved abroad. The first Sunday that we were in Bookham was Palm Sunday but also it was the last Sunday in the term for the Southey Hall boys so as usual the service closed with 'Lord dismiss us with Thy blessing,' which caused us some amusement. After the service Mrs. Higgins introduced us to Mrs. Fussell. The boys returned to school on May 1st.

On our first morning Eleanor and the children planted a broom seed in a flower-pot which we took for our school emblem, not a very happy one, as we discovered afterwards that broom only lasts about seven years. But it gave us our school colours, we chose the flower-pot red or reddish brown for our knitted cardigans which we had made at the Royal School for the Blind in Leatherhead and the children wore red berets to match, with yellow or green frocks in the summertime. A broom indeed became our emblem when the leaves in the chestnut spinney began to fall in the autumn and later when, during the war, help was difficult to get and we had to sweep out our own schoolrooms.

The windows at the back of the house looked on to the pond garden, the pond with it’s goldfish being a great source of attraction. Some time when the goldfish had disappeared, and we suspected a heron or kingfisher, a pair of frogs which kept us awake at night with their croakings produced a family of tadpoles.

Term ended on July 24th with an exhibition of work done during the term to which came the mothers of the seven pupils booked to come in the September term. Writing to one of them not long ago 1 asked if she realised it was forty years since she first came to see the school where all four of her children, now out in the world and married and doing well, received their early education.