On the 8th of May 2020, it will be 75 years since the end of the war in Europe. On that day 75 years ago, the guns fell silent after years of destruction, resulting in millions of people in the streets celebrating the arrival of peace and new hope for the future.
When VE Day dawns on 8th May, we will remember all those who saw us through this dark period in our history.
Enjoy the weekend of celebrations and parties (while of course remaining mindful of social distancing).
Below is an extract from an article that describes what the wartime period was like for those at OHS.
Extract from the article – ‘History Of The School Part 3 1932-1960’
During the years of the Second World War, violent upheavals,
abnormal conditions, constant strain, became part of the accepted
order of things. Yet we at O.H.S. were always conscious of the
contrast between our own lot and that of so many of our sister
schools in vulnerable areas — reduced in numbers, evacuated,
sharing the premises of others, too often utterly uncertain of
their future. It was our pride and happiness that we were able
in some measure to help them. In September 1939, Kensington
High School was evacuated to Oxford, and for a term its members
were our welcome guests. Good friends of O.H.S. in the
City gave them generous hospitality (several old K.H.S. girls
will remember especially their happy days at Rhodes House under
the care of the Warden and Mrs. Allen, herself an Old Girl of
the School); Mr. and Mrs. Buckler placed some of the rooms of
No. 1 Bardwell Road at their disposal (Miss Colman, the School
Secretary of those days, remembers how ” desks borrowed from
South Hampstead H.S. and loaded in London during an air-raid
were unloaded in Bardwell Road in a snowstorm “); superhuman
juggling with the time-table was accomplished; girls and Staff
travelled incessantly from one base to another; somehow, in extraordinary
conditions, we managed, and were truly sorry to say
goodbye to K.H,S. when they returned to London at the end of
the term.
During the next six months, it seemed as though the effect
of the war would actually be to reduce, not to increase our numbers,
especially since we lost many children in the Summer Term
to Canada and the U.S.A., where a large number of University
families had offered hospitality for the duration of the war to
children from corresponding homes in Great Britain. It was a
cruelly hard choice for parents to make — separation from their
children for an indefinite time, or their exposure to what might
be acute personal danger and privation. Between forty and fifty
O.H.S. University parents chose to send daughters overseas, and
the loss of these promising children was keenly felt by the School.
Then, in September 1940, came the “blitz”, and the enormous
inrush of girls from the worst danger areas, especially London;
O.H.S., opening its doors to all comers, took in children from
all over England, including fifty-three from other Trust Schools,
and as we also had with us during this term our neighbours, the
girls from Wychwood, the School was almost literally at bursting- point.
At the beginning of the Spring Term it overflowed into
another house — 13 Bardwell Road, part of which had been
generously placed at its disposal by Professor Burn. Here lived
the Upper and Lower IlI, going down to the main school buildings
for gym., art and science — an essentially makeshift arrangement
it seemed at the time, but something like it was to endure
for seventeen years, with Staff and children trudging or pedalling
up and down the Banbury Road in accordance with a time-table
of frightful intricacy, in which “travelling periods” (necessarily
geared to the pace, not of the most rapid cyclist but of the most
plodding pedestrian) had to be allowed for every day. In 1941
there was another General Post; the Ill’s moved across the road
to 18 Bardwell Road, the Kindergarten and Transition went to
No. 13. This was a change for the better, but the whole set-up
was still very obviously strange and uncomfortable.
Throughout the School, throughout the war, was felt the
over-riding desire, shared with all the children of the country, to
contribute with the maximum generosity to the national effort. At
O.H.S., the Guild of Service and a special War Service Committee
organised and co-ordinated an immense number of different
activities, which included collecting books and toys for
evacuated children, helping in an Oxford play-centre for them,
writing to our adopted ship, the Empire Morn, and working
on the school allotment and in Harvest Camps. Our National
Savings Group was formed in 1940, and ably directed by Miss
Jackson throughout the war. Side by side with these special activities,
ordinary School clubs and societies met as usual, and
indeed several new ones were formed: a Russian Club, a Gramophone
Club, a Literary and Debating Society, and a Bee-keepers’
Club, directed first by Miss Body and then by Miss Brown — (in
1943, we read, “the school bees, in a laudable spirit of service,
produced over 100 Ibs. of honey.”) Nor were School Plays in
abeyance: Viceroy Sarah, excellently produced by Miss Southwell
(now Mrs. Davis), was performed in the Taylorian Institute
in 1943; and the “Power Shield”, presented by three distinguished
Old Girls (Eileen, Rhoda and Beryl Power) for the best
“literary or historical performance,” was competed for every
year. Most important of all, throughout the war years the ordinary
work of the School went forward normally and steadily, and its academic
record during this time was a fine one, including the
gaining of Open Awards at Oxford and Cambridge by candidates
very much younger than usual. When the end of the war came,
we could recognise with thankfulness that the School had been
able, through its good fortune, to maintain without serious dislocation
its essential work, that of teaching and learning.
Therefore, we thought it would be a great opportunity to showcase the work of our girls who were inspired by the soldiers’ dedication within their art work.
Take a moment to read more about the importance of VE Day…
