Bedgebury Park

Friday, Sept. 7: Bedgebury Park

Today we rented a car and set out for Kent and Bedgebury Park school which I attended from l932 to 1936!   76 years ago, can you believe it! Dick, Pat and Connie came with me.  Dick drove all the way. We had a GPS in our rental car and set it to Bedgebury.  It took us to the Motorway and we zipped past towns whose names I remembered: Guildford, Hindhead, Petworth, Chichester.  It took us two and a half hours.  We stopped for lunch at a nice little pub and then rode around a bit looking for the school.  We found it after a couple of tries.  I remembered it as a beautiful old house with  spectacular grounds which it still is.
                                       

It is no longer a private school, but some kind of a language school.  We talked to a receptionist  who said the school had just been sold and is to be used  as a private house.

 I remembered it all:   dancing around the maypole in the spring on the beautiful lawns, sitting under the big trees  and reading, looking out my dorm. window when they had a senior dance on the terrace sitting in the library in the window seat  with the radiator  under it which was the warmest place in the school etc. 

 The man who escorted us pointed out some  old pictures of the headmistress, Miss Bickersteth,(in the old school picture below)

The inside of the building was a little shabby, but the outside was still gorgeous. Dick is going to make 

a  video of my "quest" to find my old school for our video class.  It will be fun.

This is my school portrait from 1933 and an enlargement of me at about age 12.

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We were going to  sight-see on our way back to the ship but found we did not have time.  We  took a more scenic route back via Brighton and Storrington but did not reach Southampton until 9:30 pm. - tired but victorious.

Sat. Sept 8:  Day of rest.

 We sail tonight for Antwerp where we are staying for six days.I think we are here for such a long time  to accommodate the people who are going far away to Greece and Berlin.