Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
College memories
Blouses ironed every night, clean gloves and socks pulled up. Catching the morning train, boys in one carriage and girls in the other. Starting the schoolday with a hymn and scripture.
Fond memories of the old co-educational Marlborough College have resurfaced for some of its last cohort of girls, before Marlborough Girls’ College opened in 1963. The Girls’ College this week celebrates its 60th jubilee.
Twins Shirley and Janette Matthews (now Hawtin and Simmons), and Janet Thompson (now Johnson) were among the last students who completed intermediate and started Marlborough College on the same site, which is now Marlborough Boys’ College on Blenheim’s Stephenson St. Beverley Folster (now Woolley) was in the year ahead.
Students the year behind them started form one (year 7) in the newly built Bohally Intermediate in McLauchlan St, beside the Girls’ College.
At Marlborough College, boys and girls had separate classes, except for the “professional” students aiming for university, teachers’ college or nursing training. Outside, boys played on one side of the grounds and girls on the other.
"There’d be a bellow from the staffroom above if we got too close”, Janette recalls. “If a boy liked a girl he’d take out a mirror and shine it on you.”
There was a lot of chatting in the corridors “but nothing silly”.
The group of friends, Shirley, Janette, Beverley and Janet, were all commercial students, taught shorthand and typing. They were expected to leave at the end of the fourth form or partway through the fifth. Getting a job was easy, with plenty of demand for secretaries.
“We didn’t even think about university,“Shirley says. “We weren’t encouraged do anything adventurous but to work as a secretary, get married, buy a house in Blenheim
We didn’t consider flatting or travel.”
Girls from wealthier families were more likely to take professional courses and get university entrance — which was quite prestigious — and qualify as prefects, who were all sixth form (year 11) or second year
Practical girls focused on cooking and sewing in home-life classes and practical boys learnt agriculture, trades and engineering.
An assembly started each day with a hymn and scripture reading, although
Catholic pupils went to St Mary’s instead.
Janette, who lived at Spring Creek, joined Picton students on a special train to school. Boys sat in one carriage and girls in the other, separated by Miss Watson, the girls’ principal, stationed between the two. Climbing the Elevation north of Picton, the train would move two feet forward and slide back one on the ice-covered rails. Summer tunics and white blouses were ironed every night, worn with berets and gloves with socks pulled up. In winter, suspenders supported black stockings worn with blue and white gingham bloomers.
Girls were made to kneel at regular uniform checks where skirts that didn’t touch the ground were deemed too short. Jewellery was forbidden.
Ponytails became unpopular after Miss Watson said “a horse only lifts its tail for one reason”.
Everyone competed in athletics at the annual sports week. There was also netball with matches against Nelson and Christchurch teams, with players billeted (put up in people’s homes) and attending socials at night.
There was no life education at school or home, and no mention of adolescence or sex.
Teachers remembered with affection include Miss Couch who played the school’s grand piano, glamorous home science teacher Miss O’Neill who wowed the girls with dresses she’d made, plus gentle and kind Mrs Jones who taught shorthand and typing.
The women say they are pleased that Marlborough Girls’ and Boys’ Colleges are to be co-located, saying they enjoyed sharing their schooldays with boys.