Boarding School realities

[Historicalroad]

Just wondering if anyone who attended Boarding Schools between the 60s and 90s would be willing to share their experiences?

So as to not drip feed, I'm attempting, though failing miserably so far, to write a novel. Purely fictional. I have my characters and a storyline but it works best set in a boarding school.

I've never stepped foot inside a boarding school. I've no idea what they're like but I want to keep it as realistic as possible. I've trawled the internet to try and get an insight into what life is like at boarding schools but I'm struggling. I don't think the plot would fair as well if it was set today, hence why I'm looking at some time between the 60s and the 90s.

Is it really bad that I’m still finding it hard to believe the manual laundry recollections? All these years I’ve been idly resenting the absence of ponies and erm, Switzerland, from my 1970s, Home Counties boarding school life, and blaming my parents - only now am I realising just how well they chose my school. Physical labour was not on the agenda. The food was the perfectly normal food of the time. A few indignities but teenage life was ever thus.

I do feel bad for some of you ...

At my school we didn’t have to do our own laundry, but we did (by rota) have to do boarding house chores which included sorting the clean/ironed laundry and allocating it to the named person’s laundry shelf space from where they would collect it.

And we got a full set of clean bedlinen each week (Sunday?) which we changed ourselves.

George 'hard to believe' as in you don't believe us, or 'hard to believe' as in you are totally amazed as you never before thought it could be like that?

Definitely true of Wycombe Abbey in the early 80s.

The latter!

(Not talking about actual, illegal abuse which we’ve all become aware of lately.)

I may have to add a note to each of my million MN posts extolling the virtues of boarding now - to say I can understand that if your late 20th century experience involved endless handwashing and poor food and general misery, you might be less enthusiastic about having your children board. Even though it really is different now.

George none of the girls from my boarding house have sent their children to board (that I’m aware of).

Yes, we most certainly did have to hand wash things. Can’t remember why, because there was a laundry, but I think it was only once a week so if you got your jeans dirty you had to hand wash them. Not that I remember being very clean.

Bedding arrived on the end of the bed and you had to change it, and take the dirty to the laundry. Don’t remember how frequently this was. Maybe fortnightly. I don’t think it was weekly at all.

My DM wanted to send me with flat sheets and I pleaded for fitted sheets, she said they were awfully common and I’d have to do a hospital corner. No one had flat sheets we all had fitted. So glad I managed to get her to agree. Made changing beds easier.

Our bedding towels and uniform items were washed and dried but we had to do mufti clothes, bras and pants by hand.
There were kitchen and cleaning duties at the weekends.
No tv except if there was tennis or cricket on . Videos sometimes. There was an absolute skeleton staff.

My parents always remarked how thin I was when I went home. The food wasn't great. Lots of shepherds cottage and fish pies with cabbage peas and carrots. Steamed pudding with canned fruit. Nothing I ever make or eat now.

habib the opposite was true for me - weighed and measured (height) at the beginning of every term - invariably I weighed more at school than I did at home! From the month diary I started in 1982 it's evident, backed up by some hazy memories, of being v.v.active but also if I wasn't running around on the playing fields or hanging upside down on the bars in the gym, or grooming my friend's pony! I was eating! And the iced buns at break were fab
Sunday afternoons there was always a film like Wreck of the Mary Deare and we had sweets.

How to wash clothes boarding school style: wash by hand in dormitory sink. Lay wet clothes out on towel. Roll towel with clothes inside into long sausage. Girl 1 takes one end of sausage, girl 2 takes other end and both twist sausage as tightly as they possibly can. Pull twisted sausage.

Unroll sausage and clothes are dry enough to hang on dorm radiator without dripping.

Haff - that really made me laugh, as we did the same with towels.
Not in dormitory sink though.

I still do that if I have to wash something and dry it without tumble dryer etc!

My mum taught me how to handwash and dry items like that! Tights, mainly, and the odd item as we only went to the laundrette on weekends.
At school we had laundry done for us once a week, and then replaced in our laundry bags, but unlabelled stuff or anything the laundry ladies couldn't find the name on would end up in a big pile on a table and you'd have to rummage for things most weeks. And some stuff would just get lost/stolen (on the plus side, anything unlabelled was fair game so could end up with some great clothes!)

Sheets were given out weekly and duvet covers supposed to be changed fortnightly, but after the juniors when sheet-changing was enforced (hospital corners and all), most of us didn't bother. What was minging was PE kit only being washed every half term (PE of some sort every day), but people who did lots of sport acquired extras. In the juniors we had rotas for baths every other day and for hair-washing over the bath with a sprayer once a week - my mum wrote so I could wash hair more often, and as there were two or three baths in the bathroom it was quite social. Though about 1988 they re-did the bathrooms so all baths were individual.

From Y9 it was expected that you showered or bathed at least every other day - there was a widely-ignored rota but if anyone didn't, they'd have it enforced. There were some wonderful huge Victorian bathtubs in the attics, for a relaxing deep bath. They disappeared in a refurb so for a while my friends in other houses would come over for a bath!

Am loving this thread- does anyone have experience of boarding in the 1950s or 1960s? Am wondering if it was very different to the 70s and 80s?

Haffdonga that is a good tip!