FSB (aka The French School, Bray, Co. Wicklow)
as recollected by Sonia Kaulback
It all seems (and indeed was) such a different world when I was growing up - and not just from the technological advances point of view. At this moment I am thinking particularly of our education, and of the conditions at our boarding school.
My sister Susie and I had a governess, Kay McGowan, from when I was six (and Susie a year and a half younger) until I was eleven. (I remember how surprised Kay was the first time I met her; I was lying in bed reading The Swiss Family Robinson, and she was amazed that I was already reading such a long, small-print book. I think it is quite unusual nowadays to be able to read at such an early age, but then it was pretty normal.) Kay was with us for five years, teaching us all the normal subjects, including French, together with sewing, knitting and embroidery! She also made most of our clothes. She was definitely part of the family (together with "Nanny" who came not long after, to look after my younger twin brothers), and we were really sad when she left.
A few months later, after Christmas, our parents drove us up to Dublin (at least a five-hour journey in those days, before the Irish roads became the marvels that they are today), and thence out to the coast, to Bray, where we started a new phase of life as boarders in The French School. It was a small school by today's standards, 60 boarders and 120 daygirls, but the teaching was excellent. Looking back I see how fortunate we were to have such an all-round education. However, attending boarding school definitely made me appreciate my home even more. I loved the holidays and used to dread the day when our mother would drive us up to Cork and put us on the train to Dublin. There we would be met and shepherded across the city to another station for the train out to Bray; and finally a taxi ride with our trunks out to the school.
But on the whole I was happy at the school, and I always enjoy running through all the memories in my mind. Boy, we were tough in those days! There was no heating in the building (and of course no double-glazing or anything like that), and the only source of warmth was a very small coal fire in each of the schoolrooms. When it was very cold we boarders were allowed to bring down a rug from our beds to wrap around us. We could wash our hair once a week, on Saturday evenings, and then we would take turns to kneel in front of the coal fire in our schoolroom while it dried. Regarding baths, we were allowed two a week (my nights were Monday and Thursday). We had all brought hot-water-bottles from home for the winter nights, and I remember as a prefect filling all the smaller girls' h.w.b.s from the hot water tap in one of the (three) bathrooms. It was never very hot, but sometimes it ran even cooler than usual and then (red letter day) kettles would be boiled and we would all have really hot h.w.b.s to cuddle in bed!
When we went out for a walk, or to church, or to the sportsfield, we always went in 'crocodile', two by two, with a teacher walking behind (just imagine that nowadays!), and in winter we wore a navy and maroon beret on weekdays and a navy felt hat on Sundays. In summer it was a panama hat.
Lessons were from 9.30 in the morning until l.00, with a break in the middle, and the afternoons were always taken up with games. Netball, hockey and lacrosse in the winter, and tennis in the summer. (It seems amazing, considering that these days schoolchildren generally have lessons most of the time, with games only once a week). Of course we also had school on Saturday mornings, but this was generally art. I'm not sure when we had our singing lessons, maybe those were on Saturdays as well. Once or twice a week we also had gym in the mornings, when we learned techniques on the vaulting horse (Susie was brilliant at this, and would fly over the horse, to be safely caught by two catchers at the far end), and on the parallel bars, etc.
After games we would return to the school for tea, which consisted of bread-and-butter with our own pots of jam, brought from home at the beginning of term. (How we envied the prefects, who were also allowed to bring such exciting alternatives as marmite or sandwich spread.) Then for the next two to two-and-a-half hours we would be in our form rooms doing our homework, followed by supper at 7.00. Of this latter meal I can only remember soup (we probably had this on a regular basis), and we would watch horror-struck as one of the live-in teachers (Miss Mills) doled out ladlefuls while we waited for the fateful moment when the drop on the end of her nose would fall!
Nowadays half-term means a whole week off from school, but in our day half-term meant we could go home or to a friend's for the weekend. Our home was too far away for a two-day visit, so it was the latter alternative for us. Susie and I were staying with some friends of our parents for the Summer 1953 half-term when I went down with what was at first diagnosed as mumps (it was actually an inflamed TB gland in my neck), and I remember standing up in my bed for the National Anthem during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.
Our parents were always busy with the hotel in the summer and were often away in the winter, and so were never able to attend the two yearly school events, i.e. the school Sports Day in the summer and the Carol Concert in the winter. Sports Day was fun; I always entered for the sprint races (and sometimes even won!). Then there would be the figure marching, which the whole school would have spent the previous weeks practising. And then there would be the tea for the parents. I always volunteered to help make the sandwiches the day before - the perk being that I and other volunteers could eat the crusts which were of course neatly removed! Carol Concert in the autumn term consisted, naturally, of lots of carol-singing, but also the older girls would perform a play in French. I can remember one year in which I took part, and my sole contribution was the phrase "Comme c'est romanesque", which I hope I delivered in sufficiently heart-felt manner!
The teaching at FSB was brilliant, apart from the dear but inept teacher of French and German. She taught the latter language so badly that my friend Belinda and I each procured a copy of Teach Yourself German, and studied this with such good results that we actually managed to pass the subject at O Level. Of the excellent teachers I particularly remember Miss Perrot who taught English Language, English Literature and Latin (she would be amazed to know that I think of her with great gratitude and admiration), and also our Headmistress Miss Conway who taught Mathematics and History (and also tennis). In the summer months before we took our O Level exams we would take it in turns each evening to go to Miss Conway's study and be questioned on our knowledge of, for instance, the causes of the Indian Mutiny, or the Bedchamber Question.
Apart from the French play at the Carol Concert the only nod the school made to the fact that it had been founded by a French aristocrat in 1864 was the fact that the top two classes had to speak French at lunchtime. Consequently lunch was quite a silent meal, with a lot of Passez du sel, s'il vous plait, and not much else!
The dear old French School finally closed its doors in 1966. It had definitely had its day (boarding schools are a very different affair nowadays), but I know that Susie and I were extremely fortunate to go there, and I will always remember it with affection.