Warwick Gymnasium

It’s the start of the Spring Term and Alice has returned to an annoyed house mistress in the shape of Miss Nowell-Smith, the lacrosse and cricket coach, and a more intensive timetable which included lectures on Friday evening until 6.45pm and on Saturday morning until 10.30am.

The new term also sees students using the Warwick Gymnasium for the first time.  As well as housing what was later described in the Bedfordshire Times and Standard (6 July 1956) as “the most up-to-date gymnasium in Britain”, the new building also had a biology laboratory and art room, the latter staffed by a new Art Mistress from the renowned Slade School of Fine Art.  Alice is not alone in being impressed by the construction of the gymnasium floor, several architectural and construction journals published at the time also commented on its special features.

A communal dining room sufficiently large to accommodate all students and staff won’t be built until 1957 and so Alice has to make her way (in all weathers) from her student room at 29 Lansdowne Road to the dining room at 3 Lansdowne Road.

Warwick Gymnasium, 1956