Stratford grammar girls reunited to remember the year of 1964 when The Beatles took America by storm
SIXTY glorious years and many memories were celebrated at a special reunion by the class of 1964 of Shottery Grammar School for Girls who gathered in Lower Quinton last Saturday.
By the time the young grammar school students were studying in 1964, The Beatles had taken America by storm, Mods and Rockers were exchanging ‘pleasantries’ on the beaches, while eyebrows and hemlines were raised with the introduction of the miniskirt.
Christine (Chris) Richards, aged 71, was one of 32 pupils in the same class at Shottery that year and 15 of them attended the reunion in Lower Quinton Village Hall with one former student travelling from Mexico to be there.
While the group had a big reunion 20 years ago, time moves on and so do people. Addresses change, and contact details get lost or mislaid so it was time for Chris from Lower Quinton to become Miss Marple and track down as many of her former schoolmates as possible – wherever they were – and organise another get-together.
“Our whole class was very close and while a few of us are local, others travelled from places like Devon and Wales and Greta Shorey came all the way from Mexico where she is a doctor,” she said.
“I tracked Greta down on her work social media page and dropped her an invite. Greta discovered Mexico while working with the Red Cross and has stayed there ever since – she always was the top of the form star.
“It was just our school class at the reunion and we had a very lovely time but it was also poignant at times.”
Chris also traced Sue London, who had been in the antiques business in Stow-on-the-Wold.
“I joined the town’s community page and asked if anyone knew Sue and one of the responses was from a publican who said he did. Sue’s retired and in Long Compton.
“Another Sue who attended the reunion was Sue Fell, from Warwick, who is a wheelchair user. Sue said she hadn’t been to any social occasions all year so being with us on Saturday meant a great deal to her,” said Chris.
So what was it like to be a pupil at Shottery in 1964?
“We felt like we were under scrutiny and the school could be very, very, very strict, but we were appreciative of the start it gave us and we were taught well and we enjoyed the friendships made,” Chris replied.
“Girls’ skirts were measured to ensure they covered a girl’s knee for assembly but some of them turned their skirts up again. When we were at school, we sat at a desk and you made notes in lessons – you paid attention otherwise you could not do your homework.
“In 1964 you couldn’t be seen in our school uniform talking to boys and we used to meet up on a Saturday in Stratford at a café and have a coke and play the jukebox. We did see the Mods and Rockers by the American Fountain but kept our distance,” Chris said.
Every day, Chris cycled two miles from her home in Admington to catch the bus to Stratford Bus Station where she caught another bus to Shottery; she’d do it all again on her way home.
How times have changed. While current students at Stratford Girls’ Grammar School can apply to join the sixth-form at King Edward VI School and go to any university in the UK, things were different in the early sixties.
Chris said one of the attendees at the reunion recalled how several of the girls were told not to apply for Oxford University when they were in the sixth-form: “If you applied for Oxford and weren’t accepted it would look bad on the school. We’d forgotten about that fact but isn’t that a dreadful thing?” she said.
Her own career took her in different directions but she eventually became a teaching assistant at Shipston and was a teacher at Chipping Campden.
The class of 1964 are planning more local reunions in the future but not next year
