Dancing and Ice skating

It is February 1956 and very cold, with snow and freezing conditions.  Alice mentions a Varsity Fives match being played between Oxford and Cambridge in Bedford.  This was a Rugby Fives* match which was won 238-228 by Cambridge.  The Varsity Fives matches were played from1925 to the present day with the matches from 1949 to 1956 being held at Bedford Modern, so Alice met players from the final contest here in Bedford.

*Rugby Fives is a handball game similar to squash played in an enclosed court between two players (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles), the aim being to hit the ball above a ‘bar’ across the front wall in such a way that the opposition cannot return it before a second bounce.  The ball is slightly larger than a golf ball, leather-coated and hard.  Players wear leather padded gloves on both hands, with which they hit the ball.

The cold conditions mean that Alice experiences some different sporting activities in her week at college, with ice skating taking place instead of hockey.  Alice and other students often skated on the boating lake for fun, although it is unlikely that actual lessons took place there as students described having to jump onto the safe part of the ice!  We know that in the 1920s, ice skating took place on flooded fields in Goldington village.

Alice had the excitement of a first year dance to help warm up and in her previous letters, she describes decorating the gym with enormous back cloths made of pasted together newspapers with wall paper strips on top of them.  The theme of the dance was air travel and Alice sent the following request home for items to wear to the dance:-

 

 

Skating on flooded fields in Goldington, c.1920s

Anatomy Lectures

Timetables from the 1955-56 academic year show Anatomy lectures for first-year students started in the spring term with four one-hour lectures timetabled across the week.  In this letter of 28 January 1956 Alice describes some of the teaching techniques which included marking bones and muscles on fellow students with special pencils and using human skeletons for the study of bones. 

The study of Anatomy had formed part of the curriculum right from the very early days of Bedford Physical Training College and, as in the 1950s, a human skeleton (given the nickname ‘Mr Perkins’) was used as a teaching aid.

Mr Perkins in Small Lecture Room, 1903

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

Lacrosse: Bedford v. Dartford

In the 1955-56 Season, Bedford College of Physical Education fielded no less than four lacrosse teams.  Alice usually turned out for the 1^st or 2^nd XII.  On the 26 November 1955 all four teams played against Dartford College of Physical Education and swept the board with wins for all four teams.  In her letter of 27 November Alice describes something of the journey to Dartford and the elation of winning.

Alice also gives an account of a visit to the College by one of the participants of the successful 1953 British Mount Everest expedition - the ninth mountaineering expedition to attempt the first ascent of Mount Everest and the first team confirmed to have succeeded when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on Friday, 29 May 1953 – but rather frustratingly does not mention who!

November 1955

In November 1955 Bedford College of Physical Education featured in ‘I want to be....’ – a series of features about careers for boys and girls broadcast as part of Children’s Hour on BBC Radio Home Service.  The programme contained interviews with tutors and groups of students and was first broadcast on 12 November 1955.  In her letter of 10 November, Alice reminds her parents to listen to the programme.  We know from a subsequent letter that Alice and her fellow students “thought the broadcast very bitty especially compared with the tape we bought from the BBC of all the recordings they took here”.

We learn of some of the extra-curricular activities undertaken by Alice: playing lacrosse for the College, visiting a probation officer for a biology project, and attending a weekly evening lecture delivered by an outside speaker. 

Alice makes reference to rehearsals for an end-of-term play.  She is following a long tradition going back to the early years of the College of students putting on an entertainment at the end of the autumn term.  These were often pantomimes or revues containing topical references to the College and its ways.