My Town Monday Part 4

A large proportion of my youth was obviously spent at school and most days I still walk past my old school - "The Convent" in order to get to the main part of the town.

The school is at the top of one of the hills in Bishops Stortford called Windhill.
I love this part of the town as it not only houses the school , two churches,the monastery, the Boars head pub (!) but some really old houses.



St Marys was founded by Sisters of St Mary of Namur when they arrived here from Belgium in 1896. their intention was to start a school for Bishop's Stortford's Catholic community .

That same year they acquired Windhill Lodge at the top of Windhill, renamed it St Mary's Convent and opened their school in the same building. There were just nine pupils at the start.

The original building still stands but has since undergone a great deal of alteration helped funded by the Catholic Church. The school opened as a fee paying school.

But not every Catholic family in Bishop's Stortford could afford to pay for their children's education, so in 1909 a mixed school for elementary pupils began at St Mary's for the less well off.

Named St Joseph’s, it first accommodated pupils in two classrooms in what is now the music block, but by 1914 the school had grown so rapidly that a staff of three were teaching 57 children. This is the school that my Mother went to, and now my own two children.

During the First World War, soldiers were billeted in St Mary’s at night and many child evacuees from London were taught here during World War II.

I have very happy memories of school. As a first year, most of the girls underwent "The initiation ceremony" which was instigated mainly by the second year girls.



In the original school building( the red brick building in the photo) was a set of winding, narrow "back stairs" which led to the loft area. The "back stairs" were reknowned to be haunted by the spirit of a troubled Nunn who had apparantly thrown herself off from the top of the building and now patrolled the dreaded back stairs looking for gullible first years to terrorise(!)


The stairs were very dimly lit and cold.There were probably about 5 floors in total. At the very top was a door which led to the gabled loft area. We were "encouraged" to climb all the way to the top of the stairs and when we reached the creepy door with its flaking paint work we had to knock on it- to prove our worth and see if the ghostly Nunn would appear.

I can remember being really scared,and not being able to see a huge amount apart from the door.No one really ventured to this part of the building so it also has a variety of different cobwebs and aged spiders.

Because the door probably housed no more than the hot water tank it made very strange gurgling and hissing noises which added to the fear. It reminded me of a scene from an old black and white film "Jan Eyre" where the violently insane Bertha mason - secret wife of Edward Rochester would escape from the attic of Thornfield manor and wreak havoc.


Myself and two friends started to climb the stairs one cold September morning, giggling with a mixture of nerves, mortal fear and a strange excitement. As we approached the very top we became aware of the silence, the dark and then the strange gurgling noises.

The dreaded door was at the very top of the landing , there were no windows, the air was stale and we were in darkness. I stretched out my hand ( realising that my friends were standing behind me and that I would be the ultimate sacrifical lamb)and quickly knocked three times on the door.

As soon as I had done this the three of us turned and ran down the spiral stairs which were covered in linoleum . Our shoes made clippy clop noises as we scurried down back to safety , screaming as we did so.

When we eventually reached the bottom we felt relieved that we had completed our task, but realised that there were no second year girls around to actually witness our bravery at all - instead they had probably spent their break time laughing about the silly first year girls that they had tricked to go up to the spooky attic.

I never did go all the way up to the very top of the stairs again until just before I left the school some years later but I never did actually ever knock on the door again !