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		<title><![CDATA[Walthamstow School for Girls News Feed - Alumnae News]]></title>
		<link>https://www.wsfg.waltham.sch.uk%2Fnews%2F%3Fpid%3D2208%26amp%3Bnid%3D2</link>
		<description><![CDATA[Please click here to view information on&nbsp;your membership renewal details.


Obituary - Ethel Matteson
&nbsp;


It is with great sadness that we&nbsp; announce the&nbsp;Death of Ethel Matteson, n&eacute;e Britten, our oldest alumnae at the grand age of 106.

She attended the school in the days of the first Headteacher, Blanche Hewett, along with her older sisters, her twin having sadly died at the age of 5.

The Britten family lived in Cazenove Road,&nbsp;Walthamstow. During her time at the school the Greek theatre was built and Ethel opened the 80th Anniversary fete in July 2005.

She was also a guest speaker at the 2012 Alumnae AGM, at the sprightly age of 100, speaking for half an hour without notes!

It has been a great privilege to have known her and to be part of her family. She leaves a son, daughter, grandchildren and great children, including twins in whom she took great interest.

The Alumnae will be making a donation to the Age Concern charity in her memory.




Quiz Night 2017&nbsp;


Thank you to everyone who supported the Alumnae Fundraising Quiz night on 19/10/17. There were a wide range of groups represented at the event, including local schools, parents, staff, family and friends.

The winning table included a contingent of the school support staff, who scored 97 points out of a possible 130 points.

Everyone really enjoyed the night and we were able to raise &pound;418.50.

Monies raised will be used to ensure that our extensive school archive, dating back to 1890, is preserved and used by both present and future generations of our school.

A special thanks goes to everyone who contributed to the event, either in time or raffle prizes and who helped to make the evening so special.

And lastly, the evening would not have happened without the help and support of the Alumnae, who give freely of their time to support activities at the school.

Oona Kelly
LRC Manager




MBE for Ex&ndash; Student&nbsp;


Janice Pettit n&eacute;e Warner, student from 1965-1972

Janice a local Girl Guide leader has been recognised in the New Year&rsquo;s Honour&#39;s list with an MBE (Member of the British Empire) for spending&nbsp;over forty five years&nbsp;volunteering with young people and the local community in the borough.

She also serves as regional chair of the Girl Guides&rsquo; Awards Committee for London which overseas groups in Waltham Forest. Her work with the Girl Guides led her to&nbsp; being offered a&nbsp; role in the 2012 London Olympic Games, as a &ldquo;Games Maker&rdquo;. She was one of 70,000 picked from 240,000 applicants and she volunteered for the Games&rsquo; media team.

Congratulations to Janice from all at WSFG.






Ethel&#39;s Memories
&nbsp;


In January our oldest alumni Ethel Mattison&nbsp;celebrated her 106th birthday!&nbsp;&nbsp;Here are her memories&nbsp; of being at Walthamstow&nbsp;High School as it was&nbsp; known in 1923.

WSFG 1923-1929


I was at Walthamstow High School for one term with Miss Hewitt, the first ever Head&nbsp; Mistress, and then with Miss Norris, who was a&nbsp;Classics scholar, and it was she who had the Greek Theatre built. When excavations began, we thought it was going to be a swimming pool, but after the initial disappointment, I for one was delighted.&nbsp;&nbsp;

It was opened by the Ben Greet Company with &#39;Medea&#39;, with Sybil Thorndyke in the title role. Later, when the school put on &#39;Androcles and the Lion&#39;, Miss Brown, the art teacher, made wonderful helmets for the Roman soldiers, from buckrum, painted with metallic paint. Although there were still only 300 pupils since WHS was built in 1912, more facilities were needed in the&nbsp; advancement of education for girls, so during my stay the library and&nbsp;another laboratory were built and construction on the gymnasium had begun.

A group of us were once taken by three staff members to Germany, for a week to Goslar and Hilderheim in the Hartz Mountains,&nbsp; followed by a week on the Rhine visiting Cologne, Koblenz and&nbsp; getting a wonderful view of the castles. Otherwise, our school trips were confined to&nbsp;England or the Isle of Wight. We were taken on fungus forays in Epping Forest every Autumn and on other field trips by Miss Dennithorne, mostly on Saturdays or for occasional weekends. We also went on&nbsp;visits to factories, notably Ambrosia, Yardley, Bryant &amp;&nbsp;May and The Royal Mint.&nbsp; We even went by overnight&nbsp; train to Richmond in Yorkshire to see a total eclipse of the sun, but it clouded over so we didn&#39;t see the corona, but it was an exciting and eerie experience&nbsp; nonetheless. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ethel&nbsp; aged 16&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;


I was very proud of being at WHS. The school instilled a sense of social responsibility in its pupils and, even after all these years, I still find it&nbsp; obnoxious when I see people eating or drinking in the street, or&nbsp; dropping litter.

Ethel Mattison
(n&eacute;e Britton)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;




The Ogress of Reading
&nbsp;


Traditionally, New Year is a time for reading ghost and horror stories and so here is one published by Eithne Cullen, a former Head of English at our school.&nbsp; The cover picture is &ldquo;Bleeding Heart&rdquo; by Joanna Bloor, who attended this school from 1998-2003.

The body of a baby found in a river, a young woman&rsquo;s sadness at giving up her child, one policeman&rsquo;s efforts to bring a killer to justice&hellip;

Everyone has heard of Jack the Ripper who killed five women. Amelia Dyer, the Ogress of Reading, confessed to taking more than three hundred lives. She was a baby farmer and murderer in a society where unmarried women were shamed by pregnancy and the lives of their babies were not valued. The book uses a mixture of fiction and fact to explore her crimes and the lives of those affected by them.

The novel called The Ogress of Reading, is available on Amazon at a cost of &pound;6.99.&nbsp;




WSFG Alumnae Association News&nbsp;


Spring 2019

Autumn 2018

Spring 2018

Autumn 2017

Summer 2017

Spring 2017

Autumn 2016


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		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2020 09:40:32 GMT</pubDate>
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