Ockbrook School Alumni Association

With immense sadness and heavy hearts, we have to share with you the sad loss of our dear friend and colleague Mrs Pat Ward, who died peacefully at home on Christmas Eve, following a short illness.
We are still coming to terms with this ourselves, but we know what an incredible teacher and iconic figure she was to the pupils, parents and community at Ockbrook School.
Pat loved Ockbrook School. She loved all of the pupils in her care and made a huge impact to their education and confidence, shaping the path to their future lives. We will miss her infectious sense of fun, immaculate presentation and ability to know just what each child, parent and colleague needed to help them, at any given moment. She carried out her role with the utmost fairness and immense kindness, which combined to make her a perfect teacher. We were also incredibly lucky to know her, as a cherished friend.
We are respecting her family's wish to come to terms with their tragic loss in peace. In time, we hope that any messages of condolence and memories of Mrs Ward shared will bring them some comfort.

We are pleased to announce our new Nursery funding provision for 2021-22. From September we will be able to offer up to 30 hours funding to eligible children. Please contact our registrar by phone or via [email protected]
Please share and forward to anyone who you think might be interested in starting their learning journey at Ockbrook.

The Ockbrook School Magazine - Midsummer 1940.

Mrs Joan Rippengal (Ockbrook School 1944-1953)
School Days (part ten)

All boarders had duties and there was a rota which had to be strictly observed. The easiest one was for the weekly boarders, and this consisted of putting out the ‘own jam’ on two breakfasts and two teatimes every week.

Each girl had her own pot of jam, marmalade, honey, Marmite or peanut butter, marked with her name. These jars were stored in a big cupboard in the scullery next to the hall and our job was to put them all out on the right tables before the meal. Woe betide you if you forgot, or if you couldn’t remember at which table each girl sat. On the other days it was ‘school jam’.

Sometimes our supply of ‘own jam’ ran out, but we could, with permission, take our empty jar and go down Bakehouse Lane to the shop at the bottom of the hill where they had a wooden barrel of peanut butter, which was not ‘on ration’. If you were lucky, they had recently given it a stir, but, if not, you got a lot of the oil which rose to the top.

Mrs Joan Rippengal (Ockbrook School 1944-1953)
School Days (part nine)

During the war, day girls at Ockbrook had school dinners delivered by van from a central kitchen which served many schools.

The food came hot in large rectangular aluminium containers and was variable in quality. There
was usually a lot of gristle in the meat. I particularly remember the days when we had hot beetroot slices swimming in white sauce. You could make some quite striking marbled effects by swirling the beetroot around.

Boarders were fed from the school’s kitchen, next to the hall which was both dining and assembly hall. I think the cooks were English but most of the other domestic staff were European refugees. It was not unusual for a pupil to report to the Headmistress that one of the maids was crying in the pantry. We felt desperately sorry for them; some were still in their teens, torn from their family and everything they had known, and stuck in a foreign land having to do menial work. On the other hand, they were alive and not in a N**i concentration camp which is no doubt where many of their families ended up. Incidentally, the pantry housed the school’s only telephone, an old-fashioned ‘candlestick’ model.

Our condolences to the family of Dr Tonie Haynes, a former pupil of Ockbrook School. She left us in the 1940s for Derby Technical College and then went on to medical school. She settled in the village and ended up living on the Settlement. Her niece has very graciously donated a number of historical school items and we will be sharing these with you over the coming months.

Here is a page from a pamphlet in 1949 advertising the launch of a school fund, which led to the building of the BIrtill Hall. There is also a copy of a school calendar from 1950. We have many more magazines and memorabilia to share with you soon - so watch this space!

Mrs Joan Rippengal (Ockbrook School 1944-1953)
School Days (part eight)

My claim to fame was that my brother made me a primitive ‘cat’s whisker’ radio set. As my bed was below a sash window it was easy to drop the aerial out of the window and almost close it, with the
aerial end attached to the device and headphones hidden under the pillow. I snuggled down in bed to listen to whatever programme I could pick up and that was why, one night, I was the only girl not given an ‘order mark’ by Miss Harris who was on duty, when the rest of the dormitory were caught out of bed and misbehaving.

Just as summer nights in Junior Dorm could be suffocatingly hot, so could winter nights be unbearably cold. I remember folding my ‘home blanket’ multiple times to give some more weight and warmth over my legs. Most termly boarders brought their eiderdowns from home, but weekly boarders usually just had their extra blanket.

We were turned out of doors for morning and afternoon break times and in winter it was often quite a trial to keep warm. Sometimes we managed to sneak into the boiler room which was at the foot of the steps on to Bottom Court. The boiler was a huge coke-fired one, tended by Walter Cook, the school’s friendly handyman, gardener and general factotum. I don’t think Ockbrook could have functioned without him. The boiler room always smelt of coke fumes and was probably not particularly healthy but Walter was very kind and let some of us in to warm.

Mrs Joan Rippengal (Ockbrook School 1944-1953)
School Days (part 7)

Being only 9 years old in Junior Dorm meant that you were ‘First Suppers’ and had to start going to bed at 6pm under the care of Miss Bayne, the school matron. We met in her room on the ground floor at the foot of the wooden stairs and in bad weather before supper we sometimes played games such as ‘Pelmanism’ or ‘Snap’ on the carpet. Older, ‘Second Suppers’, went to bed a little later, thus staggering the use of the bathrooms.

In summertime it was very difficult to get to sleep, because Junior Dorm got very hot up there under the roof, and the sound of senior girls playing tennis far below in the sunshine went on for ages. We were inspected by the mistress on duty who came up to
see we were all in bed at the proper time. Some of the younger staff would read or tell a story, but after that it was supposed to be ‘lights out’ and silence. Naturally it seldom was. Sometimes we made such a din that no one heard the duty mistress coming up the back stairs, but usually someone would notice the creaking wooden steps and a frantic whisper went round the room followed by a scramble to get into bed and feign sleep.

Occasionally, especially if someone had a birthday and a special ‘tuck’ delivery which could be hidden away, there would be a midnight feast, though it was never a feast and never at midnight.

Mrs Joan Rippengal (Ockbrook School 1944-1953)
School Days (part 6)

I was given a bed in Junior Dormitory, an enormous room at the very top of the building and running the whole width. The view from the big sash windows on the south side was amazing and on a clear day you could see right beyond the Trent valley to the hills of Charnwood Forest. My bed was under a window on the north side. There were 24 beds in all, placed round the perimeter, and in the middle was a collection of chests of drawers, arranged back-to-back making an island. Several of them were handsome mahogany antiques. Every girl was assigned at least one drawer.

There was also a piano, one of several around the School used for piano practice. In its day, it had been a very good one but it
had lost a few of its genuine ivory keys and playing those keys with the remaining rough glue wasn’t very pleasant. In the middle of the west end of the room was a door to the wooden back stairs,
flanked by two small bedrooms for members of staff. At the opposite side were two cubicles for prefects, one on each side of the door leading to the bathrooms and the main stone staircase.

Do you remember Physics lessons when you were at Ockbrook - were they ever like this...? 😲

Year 9 have been studying Nuclear Physics. They have been looking at how chain reactions are used and controlled in nuclear power stations. They used tongue depressors to model a chain reaction and made a 'cobra weave stick bomb'. #atockbroktoday #STEM