Children interviewing Vera Farr

[The children asked Vera about Sunday School.]

A1. When I was a little girl, most children went to Sunday School on Sunday.  I went to Sunday School at St John’s Church, on the hill.  [A pupil explains that she went to that Church.]  Vera explains that the lady who was Rose Queen in her year, who she went to school with, went to Christ Church Sunday School and Christ Church Brownies and Christ Church church with her Mum and Dad.  And you had to be doing things like that in order to be Rose Queen of Christ Church School.

Q2. How did they make the dresses?

A2. How did they make them?  Well, I suppose their Mum’s made them on the sewing machine.  And the lady who taught needlework here, the teacher that taught needlework here, she had a hand in it as well.  And she was very good at needlework, but she was very, very strict.  For every needlework lesson she used to say, “show me your hands, girls”, and we used to have to show her them like that.  And she had to see that there was no dirt under our fingernails and that the little half-moons were showing.  And if your hands were dirty you were sent away to scrub them before you could pick up your needlework.  

[A pupil explains that she is quite good at needlework.  She is doing a long-stitch at home because I want to take after my Mum because she has done a pillowcase for both me and my sister, she has done a teddy-bear picture, airplanes and she has done this massive marriage one.  Vera asks does she do cross-stitch?  The pupil says she does any kind of stitch and that she is knitting her a Harry-Potter scarf.]

Q3. Vera asks the group if they do needlework at School.  

A3. They say no, but only every now and then when there is something important.

Vera says I used to love needlework and that needlework teacher was part of the reason that I went on to teach needlework myself.  I taught needlework in schools for older children and cookery.

Q4. How long did it take to make the dresses?

A4. I really don’t know.  I guess, I would expect that it took a long time because they were very, very pretty.  The lady you need to ask about that is sitting at the very far table, because she was the very first Rose Queen.

Q5. Were there any prizes for the Rose Queen?

A5. No.

Q6. Did you enjoy it?

A6. Oh, I loved it because I loved doing the country dancing, yes.  And I told you years later; I used those same country dances to teach other girls how to do it.  So we must have had very good teachers for me to remember all those years.

Q7. Could only girls do country dancing?

A7. No, the boys did it as well.  They were never as good at it, but they did it.  They used to moan a bit when it was country dancing afternoon, but they still did it.  [A pupil explains that she loves dancing].  

I used to dance sometimes with the man who is now my husband; he was sometimes my partner.  He was also very naughty, we used to have inkwells and I had long plaits and my mother used to put a lovely bow at the end of each plait.  And he used to dip them into the inkwells because he used to sit behind me and he used to dip my plaits in his ink well.  And when I turned I would have ink all down the front of my blouse or my dress.  And my Mum used to get very cross with him.

Q8. How old did you have to be, to be a Rose Queen?

A8. It was usually, I think, the last year you were going to be here.  But don’t forget I was only here for the one Rose Queen, because that was the year that Ann and I and the others were leaving here.  But I think, they chose a girl who was going to be in next to the leaving class so that she would crown, when she was in the top end of the School, the new Rose Queen.