Barrow Hills Tape-Recorded Recollections 1963
John Harvey writes:
I was at Barrow Hills from 1959 to 1963, starting at age seven, and then going on to St. George's College as most boys did in those
days. The photo is of me and my sister in the school drive; the standing lions have now been replaced with ones lying down.
The family home was in Whitton, near Twickenham rugby ground in Middlesex. In my final year I was interviewed during the school holidays
by Mr. Moss, a neighbour in our road, who possessed a 1950s Grundig valve operated open reel tape recorder, qute a rarity in those days
and very expensive. I still have the original quarter inch tape, later transferred to cassette tape and then digitised to MP3. The audio
quality is not great, but that's how it was in those days.
The content will mean very little unless you attended Barrow Hills in that far off era. I have made it available now in the hope
that this 22 minute recording may be of some historical interest to old Barrow Hillians and perhaps rekindle some half forgotton
memories!
The interview took me through a typical school day, starting with mass and breakfast, then morning lessons and on to evening study
period (homework) and bed, together with a different schedule on religious feast days when there were no lessons and a film show in
the evening in place of study.
Haliborange was a vitamin C pill that many of us took every day under the supervision of Matron. The headmaster was Fr. Bede. The
reference to Mary was to my sister. The new building was the classroom block attached to the gymnasium which was first used in the
Easter term 1963.
There was a film show on Sunday evenings, put on by Fr. Aidan using an ancient 35mm projector. These were generally educational and
travel films, only on feast days did we get to see a proper feature film. The masters had a TV set secreted in their common room but
television was totally absent in our daily lives.
The following year the same Mr. Moss interviewed me during my first year at St. George's College. The audio quality is pretty poor to
the point of being in part inaudible but I will endeavour to enhance it and also make it available here.
