Heather Turton (née Smith)

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I never liked writing essays so this will be a précis version of the last 50 years!

Secretarial college and first job in London, then returned to Bournemouth as I had already met Roger, now married for 45 years and in our thatched cottage for 40 years. Worked locally and became a medical secretary in a psychiatric hospital for several years.

Our son Steve, an engineer, now lives and works in Bangkok.  Our daughter Nicki left TH in 2005 for Aberystwyth University, then recently changed careers to study physiotherapy at Liverpool Uni, with adventurous travel plans before starting her first physio job.  Family holidays can vary from playing with our lovely grandson in Thailand, to dog walking in north Wales!

Roger’s hobby is flying,  mine include badminton, gardening and supporting AFC Bournemouth.  I still enjoy working at TH (for 20 years now!) as a teaching assistant in the Pre-prep Department – very different views of Talbot Heath as a pupil, parent, OGA secretary and an employee!

Lexi Dick

My author photo

Current Name: still Lexi Dick, though I write fiction under the name Lexi Revellian (a name I made up in a cunning plan to come up first on Google).

On leaving school I studied 3D design at Ravensbourne College of Art, then did a postgraduate course in jewellery at the Royal College of Art. I work as a self-employed designer jeweller in my studio in Hoxton, London. I'm a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, whose Hall is a handily short bike ride from my workshop. When I'm not making jewellery I write novels, and have sold about 75,000 so far.

I'm divorced, and brought my daughter Minty up on my own. She is 28 and totally brilliant.

I like restoring rocking horses when I have time.

Debbie and me, photographed at Beales at Christmas

What I liked best at TH: the woods.
What I liked least: some of the mean old bats who taught there. And that uniform...

Find me at:
Lexi Dick Jeweller
Lexi Revellian Author
My Amazon author page

Caroline Morris (née Higgins)

Caroline now

Caroline aged about eight outside her house

Caroline aged sixteen

I remember my time at Talbot Heath with nostalgia, and I’m surprised by my memories of all sorts of trivial things, rather than the actual lessons.

Do you remember the school uniforms that changed from winter to those awful pink dresses for summer, the indoor and outdoor shoes, and the hats/berets and panamas. It was a nightmare getting all the correct gear from Beales department store in the Square. The school monitors had to check that the length of our skirts were no higher than 2 inches above the knee. Our hair should not touch our collar, be tied up in bunches or backcombed into beehives.

In fact it all seemed to be ruled and regulated. No running in the corridors on those wonderful parquet floors and single file only, even if it was only two people. I remember the endless practice of filing into the lily-pond quadrangle by class number for the school birthday and speech day, and we had to wear those little white gloves.

We even had to file into the canteen for lunch. There were long tables with 8 people per side and a 6^th former at each end to divvy up the big meat pies into 18 identical squares. I really disliked the stodgy food, though my worst fear was getting the skin on the custard.

There were good times; playing in the woods in breaktime, making dens with pine branches and avoiding those huge red-ant nests that erupted with fury if disturbed. And there bad times; waiting in the corridor outside Dr Mac’s room for the green light to come on.

I do remember some of the teachers. I loved Miss Wilson’s art lessons in the studio in the playground and how she used to drive her old Morris Minor right up to the door, whilst most of us were lucky just to have bicycles. And our first male teacher, was it Mr Ghey?

The worst ever lessons were domestic science with Mrs Stalleybrass, who made us embroider our own white aprons with our names. I may never be able to look at a blancmange again. Whereas Miss Henderson’s geography lessons were a delight and she used to bring in slides of her holidays abroad at the end of term.

I was useless at sport, and hated the scratchy Aertex shirts as well. Miss Michie (built like a cannon wearing grey divided shorts) used to despair of me, whereas Miss Vernon-Browne was more sanguine and accepted that some people couldn’t get the hang of thwacking people across the ankles with a hockey stick.

Actually I was useless at music as well. More or less on the first day in the music room at the top of the southwest tower, our class were asked to sing along while Miss Lord, or was it Miss Redfearn, played the piano. There was this terrible discordant voice in the class and embarrassingly, it turned out to be me. Even two years of trying to conquer the intricacies of the descant recorder didn’t seem to help, so I gave up gratefully.

I failed French several times and even tried German, but languages didn’t seem to be my forte. However science held me spellbound. Biology, chemistry and physics lessons were great fun, despite those blue crossover overalls we had to wear in the lab.

I loved science so much I went on to study it at London University. Then I got a job working in Medical Research at the Cyclotron Unit in the physics department at Hammersmith Hospital. The cyclotron is like an X-ray machine on steroids and was used to treat people with in-operable cancer.

After a wonderful 10 years, I decided on a complete change of career and became an inspector of nuclear-energy submarines and power-stations. This was seriously non-glamorous work: crawling around in a boiler-suit in semi-darkness with a torch inspecting the safety of various nuclear establishments, climbing up chimney stacks to read instruments and squashing down submarine ladders to inspect the nuclear power plant.

Once again, I changed career after 12 years for a new challenge and joined the Food Standards Agency in London. This unit dealt with any food-related emergencies, to stop contaminated food getting into the foodchain. It was fascinating, varied, hectic and never boring. From oil-tanker spills, fake labelling on dodgy vodka, e-coli in milk chocolate, radioactive plum-jam imported from Chernobyl to donkey-meat in salami.

In between these times, I got married and we now live happily in Uxbridge, pottering about in the garden and drinking G+T on our elderly boat on the Thames. 

Prue Baker

St Mary’s Upper 5 dorm 1966. Back row left
to right: Anne Grobecker, Vicky Freer, Gerry Dibsdale,
Liz Gould, Alison John, Janet Langford.
Front row: Suzanne Wigginton (wiggy),
Prue Redfern, Judy Clark, Meryl 

Unlike Lexi, I never was any good at art – I used to come bottom in the exams and Miss Wilson gave up on me!

My talent was languages and, even though she was an eccentric woman, I was quite fond of Miss Howarth and did well at German, French and Latin. I kept in touch with her in her retirement in the Lake District with her sister - they were both friends of my grandmother. I hated Dr Mac with a vengeance, as she never missed an opportunity to put me down and she seriously affected my confidence for years.

I boarded from L5 onwards at St. Mary’s and relished the experience and made lots of friends in addition to my day girl friends. We had lots of fun – Ouija boards in the dorm after lights out, April fools on Matron etc..

Since then, I got a degree in modern languages and library science at Aberystwyth and worked in academic libraries for 10 years. I then moved to Esso where I learned to manage teams of people and was given a fair amount of responsibility in running their buildings (facilities management). After Esso I was with a major commercial property developer, then outsourced facilities management finally looking after Europe, Middle East and Africa for an international firm of architects. In my spare time I sailed, skied and played tennis. Ill health (rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia) took its toll and I eventually had to take early retirement in 2003. Since then my health has slowly improved and I am managing to lead a relatively normal life.

I married Brian in 1994 and have 3 stepchildren and 4 step grandchildren who are all wonderful. We had 10 years of retirement living 6 months of the year in south west France, which was terrific. Sadly, Brian died of pancreatic cancer 2 years ago and I am building a new life and making some new friends. My step daughter, Charlotte, lives near me and I am very involved in her charity funding education for children in Madagascar. I am a keen gardener, I have a beach hut at Calshot and volunteer at the local museum and art gallery. I am travelling a bit more – some of my family live in Oman – and I mustn’t forget to mention my 2 lovely dogs, a French rescue Yorkipoo and a corgi.

I still see Joanna Baldwin, Julie Moore, Dunja Daniloff and Liz Gould. Liz and her husband, Sandy, moved to Lymington last year and I am really enjoying their company and our fortnightly pub crawls!

That’s a very abbreviated version of the last 50 years. I look forward to seeing other tales. 

Old Talbot Heath photos from Sheila (Curtis) Vesely

Click on a photo to see it full size...

Ducks in the quadrangle

Mally on left, Lynn in the middle

Sue, Lin, Mally and Jill

Eleanor Nesbitt

I didn’t have any special friends at my primary school but that all changed as soon as I started at TH. The friendships that began there now feel increasingly precious.

I enjoyed academic subjects – especially (my A level subjects) French, Latin and Greek. I loathed gym and games – so my least favourite teachers were the ones who inflicted these on me. I loved spending time in the library and in the art studio, where I marvelled at other people’s talent. Best of all were the woods (especially the Y tree) and the pond with its caddis flies and water boatmen and newts. 

I never really left school. After Cambridge and Oxford I taught in a girls’ school in the Himalayan foothills, where the navy uniform was remarkably like ours at TH. Then I taught in a Coventry comprehensive, where I found that three of my pupils were first cousins of girls I’d taught in India, and my interest in Sikhs and Sikhism grew.

In the University of Nottingham I researched local Sikh communities for an M. Phil degree and then I joined the University of Warwick where most of my research and teaching have related to India in one way or another. Gaining a professorship was a wonderful finale.

Talbot Heath provided so many useful skills. Probably the most useful one has been the art of writing a précis (something I certainly didn’t relish doing in those days).

In about 1962 the TH magazine published a poem about my beloved cat, Persil. Poetry has run with me through the decades since. Some of my poems appear in Turn but a Stone, Gemini Four and Making Nothing Happen. Jenny Hare (née Rench) has illustrated fifty of my sillier animal rhymes. (Get in touch with either of us if you’re interested.)

There’s a list of my more prosaic publications on Warwick University’s website here.

I particularly like the cover (another friend’s painting) of Interfaith Pilgrims. I’m happy that Oxford University Press asked me to write (on Sikhism)  for their very tactile ‘Very Short Introduction’ series. It’s very satisfying researching, writing and publishing books. The next (due out in 2019) is Sikh: Two Centuries of Western Women’s Art and Writing. The seventy or so women include Queen Victoria and J.K. Rowling.

My husband, Ram, is from Punjab, though he’s not a Sikh. I have three step-children and four step-grandchildren. Coventry has been home since 1977. With its over 1000 years of religious, literary history it is endlessly stimulating and I enjoy meeting people from so many backgrounds and learning from walkers on the various historical walks I've devised. Living near a bus stop, a railway station and an international airport I feel well-connected with the rest of the world – quite apart from the Internet. I'm looking forward to Coventry's year as UK City of Culture 2021. 

Sue Hall (née Watts)

   

I still can’t believe that we left school 50 years ago.  The day we left we all signed our straw hats and changed their appearance somewhat, I still have mine.  Jill Edge and I were crying as we went home, and I remember feeling empty – what was going to happen now?  I also remember being a disappointment to Dr McPherson.  I had the grades but didn’t want to go to University.  I trained as a secretary to get a job I could do anywhere because I wanted to travel.  I emigrated to South Africa (for 6 months), came home and shared a flat in Bristol for a while with Caroline Adams, got married, and lived in Germany for three years as my husband was in the RAF. When we moved back to the UK, I worked at the University of Southampton until my son arrived.  He enabled me to discover integrated medicine, and dyslexia.   Living in Otterbourne, just outside Winchester we did the ‘The Good Life’ thing with pigs, sheep, chickens and a vegetable garden together with tennis, gundog training and golf.

  

We all emigrated to Canada 20 years ago, where I learned to ski, downhill and cross country, I volunteered at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and hike with my two Labradors nearly every day. I have a new passion, and a new goal.  I lawn bowl and am determined to play for my province, British Columbia, as I’m a comparative youngster in this sport, so plenty of time to improve!

For the past 20 years I have been working with adults and children who have dyslexia.  Ironically, three years ago, I published my book about dyslexia, Fish Don’t Climb Trees, despite the fact that reading still sends me to sleep, and the editing took a long time!

   

So back to TH... I started in Form 1, above is a photo with Miss Taylor in Form 3.  I loved the woods, and making houses out of pine needles and wished I was a boarder because they got sticky buns at break.  I remember extra reading lessons in the domestic science room, that I hated Math and was just as shocked as my teacher when I passed Math O Level.  I loved Geography with Miss Henderson, I loved History with Miss Overton and I always marvelled at the number of peep toe shoes Miss Whyte had that were exactly the same style, just different colours.

  

I remember a visit to Canford for the Debating Society – and how we all howled with laughter when a vertically challenged young man announced “I would like to expand” and yet I can’t remember what I had for breakfast?  I remember, when the 1st TH girls team played the 2nd Canford boys team at cricket, and being of a similar vertical challenge, that the cricket pads did not bend where my knees bent, which made running challenging.  I loved learning Scottish and ballroom dances during wet playtimes.  I do feel blessed to have been to TH … and hope to get back for a visit one day!  In the meantime, if any of you visit the west coast of Canada, please come and stay!