Girls grammars in the 60s (and beyond)

At my single sex high school there used to be a collection of men, some with dogs some without, who used to peer through the railings at the bottom of the hockey field. We never took any notice of them or even acknowledged their existence.

There were allotments near my grammar school and a piece of wasteland we called ‘the rec’, we were told not to go there but of course some of us did.

Our very small Girls' Grammar school was in the centre of London and was surrounded by busy main roads so it was difficult to tell if anyone who shouldn't be was hanging around as there were always crowds of people walking around. However, one day one of the 6th formers (who were the only ones allowed out at lunchtime and breaks) reported a man behaving suspiciously by the front gates, and he was still there an hour or so after lunchtime peering through. Our playground was at the back of the building so he couldn't see anything much.

Our PE teacher, a woman in her 50s and built like a Roman gladiator, rushed out and saw him off as my year watched from a classroom window! We never did find out what he said he was doing there!

My Girls Grammar was a newish build on former farmland. It had a public footpath alongside part of its boundary. there was a wide border of trees alongside it which was inside our boundary. Boys from the nearby boys Grammar school liked to walk along it during dinner break (we weren't allowed out at dinnertime). We were strictly forbidden to enter this little boundary copse and talk to the boys on pain of death.

I often wonder if it was realised that we met up in local cafes after school...

One girl in our year was practically expelled for talking to one of the young men working on repairs to a school building. She did actually know him 'out of school'..

We just thought it was ridiculous...

There was unusual enthusiasm for PE one day at my school, young workmen fixing the roof.

We had extensive grounds and remember finding porn magazines in one of the distant bushes. We left them there for the owner.

Ha ha! Good for you. I don’t think anybody loitering these days would take much notice of caretakers or anybody else, if anything it might be dangerous for them to approach these people to scare them off.

More innocent times then.

And reader ‘I married one of them’ who later became a Director of said factory.

We were forbidden to take a short cut to school, as it meant passing a factory - again, we wondered why, as the young men from the factory often wandered along in their breaks, to watch us play hockey or rounders. It was the Caretakers job to move them back, from whence they came!