Chapter 8: Miss Hayhurst and Exmouth House School

There are just a handful of other details about the building during the time when it was a school that are worth recording. At the top of the main flight of stairs Mrs Fearnside recalls that there was a loo of an old-fashioned type with fitted seat and a pull-up flush. She also notes that the school was lit by gas, and the floors -- including the stairs -- were covered by thick dark brown lino. She adds: ‘I do not think there was a bathroom in the house, and I do not think that there had ever been a bathroom there.’

One feature that she particularly recalled was a half-glazed door, which was attractive, especially on a sunny day with the sunlight shining through. She described it as follows: ‘It had coloured glass panes. The four corners were blue with a big white star in the centre of each, red glass at the sides and the central large pane was white opaque glass. I believe it was partly engraved.’ Now this description exactly fits the door from the rear study to the hallway, view image but Mrs Fearnside was initially confident that this was the front door. She then wondered if it might have been the inner front door. She explained how:

I recollect attending an Old Girls Reunion one evening during a Christmas holiday period, when going in at the front I was faced by a solid dark front door and realised then that the coloured glass one I had remembered was, in fact, a vestibule door. In my home at St Helen’s Road we kept the outer door open, folded back against the wall, except at night and in cold weather, and closed the inner half glazed one. This provided light for the hall and staircase, and at Exmouth House the memory of the sun though the coloured glass has remained with me.

It is certainly likely that the arrangement existed of having the front door open and the vestibule door closed, as she describes (there is an old hook on the wall at skirting level so that the front door can be secured open). It is also possible, if unlikely, that the upper part of the front door was indeed solid at that point and that the glazed panels are a later development. The problem is that it is hard to see how the inner door could ever have been glazed other than with panels of patterned white glass as at present, and it is also suspicious how exactly her recollection of the door with coloured glass matches the existing one at the back of the house. Perhaps the two got confused in her mind.