Chapter 8: Miss Hayhurst and Exmouth House School

Beyond such references, our detailed knowledge of the school comes mainly from the reminiscences of Alice Fearnside and Margaret Stephens, and particularly the former, my association with whom was described in the Preamble. Mrs Stephens visited the house on 7 April 1992 and Mrs Fearnside on 14 September 1995; the latter also provided me with various written recollections both before and after that. Both attended the school in the 1920s, but Mrs Stephens recalled that her sister in law was already at the school in 1916 and Mrs Fearnside noted that, when she was ten years old, she already knew several ‘old girls’ who were married and in their twenties or older. The clientele seems to have been mainly local. Mrs Fearnside mentioned the secondhand furniture shop, Reeves and Son, 2-6 Courthouse Street, which had another adjoining shop facing the High Street which was bombed in the 2nd World War and has never been rebuilt: Mr. William Reeves’ five daughters all attended Exmouth House School, as did the daughters of Mr. William Judge, Baker and Pastrycook, and Mr. Goldsworthy, landlord of the ‘Jenny Lind’, all living in the High Street. She added: ‘I was in the same class as the youngest Reeves girl, and she had two married sisters who had been through Exmouth House School, the eldest then being about thirty’. Only a few girls lived so far away from the school that they could not go home for lunch (one of them being Mrs Fearnside), and for these an upstairs room was set aside for them to eat the packed lunch they brought with them, as we will see.

Turning to the staff of the school, the most important was undoubtedly the headmistress or principal, Elizabeth Goudie Hayhurst. Mrs Fearnside provides a detailed description of her:

She was a lady of slight build, upright, and she had a stately walk. She had refined features and a pleasant personality. She had slightly waving hair, parted in the middle and twisted into a ‘bun’ at the nape of her neck. Usually she wore a skirt and ‘twin set’ (jumper & matching cardigan) with a string of pearls. In summer, silk blouses, with a skirt. (I never remember a dress!)… She seemed very well educated, and was an excellent teacher who made all her subjects interesting and enjoyable. She also spoke fluent French.

To this might be added some comments from the slightly gushing ‘appreciation’ that accompanied the account of her funeral in a newspaper cutting, perhaps from the Hastings Observer, in 1963:

She was a small, neat, brisk woman, with a kind heart, a firm manner, an excellent brain, and an unruffled composure at all times. She was no martinet, there were no negative rules in her school. She did not have to give orders, she made them sound like suggestions instead - ‘We will do this together, shall we? - and her pupils, under the spell of her personality, readily acceded to her wishes. To her, every pupil was an individual, with her own original talents to be encouraged, and a personality which would blossom and flower under her guidance, though she had no time for mere eccentricity. She believed firmly in education for girls, even in times when the only future for the average woman was marriage. It was her conviction that girls made even better wives and mothers if they had been allowed to develop their brains and personalities to their utmost capacity… She taught us far more than academic subjects: she guided us, moulded us to high standards of behaviour, and educated us in the most liberal sense of the word.

As far as Miss Hayhurst’s actual teaching is concerned, all that Mrs Fearnside records is that she gave elocution lessons in the upstairs front room on the north-eastern side of the house, which were said to be optional. However, Mrs Stephens recalled that she was given lessons in elocution daily because she was not very good at it. Beyond that, Miss Hayhurst was clearly much in evidence in all the activities of the school, to which we will come shortly. In addition, she was very careful in choosing pupils for the school. Mrs Fearnside recalled that Miss Hayhurst used the room that is now the bathroom to interview parents, adding: ‘On the walls were group photographs of the school and single photographs of some of the pupils, past and present.’ Mrs Stephens added that Miss Hayhurst went to the homes of putative pupils and interviewed the parents, and that she was quite fussy.