SMOGs - St Mary's Old Girls' Association

St Mary's Wantage

Wantage Memories 1926-1933

I came to SMS in the summer term of 1926, the youngest girl they had had so far, a few weeks short of my tenth birthday.
They had just started the first form and there were six of us ten year olds. I came because my mother had been there from 1898 to 1902. She was, I think, the first professional woman that the school turned out.

World War Two Memories

I arrived in the middle of term in 1940 or 1941 as the day school I was at in Basingstoke was bombed.
As there was no petrol, we used to come back to school on the train from Reading to Wantage Road Station. When my parents visited me they had to come by bus to Newbury and then another to Wantage, and back.

St Mary's in the 1940's

Daily routines
The bell goes and we fetch hot water in our cans. I am in a dormitory on the top floor, later used as an Art Room.
Along the passage are the music practice rooms, and Miss Maling’s study. The following year I am in a small single room in ‘Cherry’. Further along are rooms called Saints, and the bathrooms.

Daily Routine for Girls 1967

DAILY ROUTINE
Monday to Friday
7.10 Rising bell.
(7.25 Thursdays only take dirty laundry to Linen Room or S.Gabriel's landing). Strip bedclothes completely off beds and fold over chairs on Mondays and Thursdays. Strip right back on other days.