By Joyce Shaw
First of all, my training began in an all female residential college in 1963. It was my first time away from home and even though it was Durham and only 13 miles away, there were strict rules for all the female students to obey. One of them was our freedom (or lack of it!) and we were not allowed weekend leave to go home …although we could apply to go home twice a term.
If we went out in the evening, we had to be back by 10.30pm. If we applied for extra time we were only allowed 10.45pm and this was
limited application!
We could not have boys in our room at certain hours (eg after 9pm). Of course we students managed to fool the residential tutors with the “oak up” signs. These were cards we could hang on the door handle to say that we were studying! There was more than one incident when all students were called to assemble because a warning was put out that there was a possible burglar who escaped out of the ground floor window….the spinster lecturers who lived on the site never worked it out that each time it was a boyfriend who had overstayed his welcome!
The college rules were strict, even in the 60s. Students were not allowed to qualify if they became pregnant and didn’t get married…there were 5 students who were in this situation in my college time!
We were only allowed to wear trousers if we did NOT wear them with the college scarf. The lecturers insisted that females in trousers lowered the standards of the college, therefore we must not identify ourselves as Neville’s Cross College students if we did go out in trousers. The snag with this was that in the harsh winters, our outdoor clothes consisted of Hush Puppies (lace up suede shoes), a duffle coat (which saw me through my college days) and trousers with the thick college scarf!
On the first weekend of entering the college, most of us had never been away from home and so we spent most of the night getting to know each other and talking. At 11.15pm there as a knock on the door and a weird apparition stood there in curlers, maroon woolly dressing gown and slippers. It was Miss Kewley, the history lecturer who had a flat below my room.
She announced that no one should be using the ablutions after 10.45pm. Our noise and the plumbing had obviously disturbed her and we were all ordered to appear outside her flat at 8am the next morning…..this resulted in us all being late for breakfast and we were treated as small, naughty children as we stood on the mat listening to her tirade. (How many students today would tolerate this??)
The meals in the dining room had formal dinner once a week when students could not leave until high table had all gone…some lecturers took longer than others so this was often tedious as it took away our precious evening time. Students who sat with their backs to high table would often cut up orange peel and put it in their mouths making false teeth. Of course we had to suppress our laughter as there would have been big trouble if high table had spotted anything funny going on!
One day when I went to collect the pudding, it was apricots, and in the syrup were a lot of dead ants floating round. The meals supervisor was a large formidable woman but I felt brave enough to take it back and complain. When I showed her the ants, she sent me packing with the words “You always get ants in the apricots!”
