The Ursuline School
During their time at Spetisbury the nuns ran a boarding and day school known as the Ursuline High School, though for its pupils it was generally simply known as “St. Monica’s”. Children were taken from as young as three up to the age of 18 and were mostly girls, although younger boys were also admitted. The younger children wore a brown uniform and the secondary girls wore “blue gym slips with a blue and white blouse (white on Sunday) with a blue velour hat with a wide turned-up brim and a badge on the front.”
When the nuns first arrived, they brought “a certain number of young girls with them” and at first, the school had many French students, but gradually, as it became accepted locally, the majority of pupils were English. By the time of World War I the convent was in a flourishing condition with the school full to bursting point. A pupil in 1920 wrote “I was a boarder and there were quite a lot of girls from the Bournemouth ares as well as others from France, Spain and Belgium.”
The 1911 census shows that at that time there were nine pupils boarding, of whom only one was English and only two were boys.
Children and nuns in the garden of St. Monica’s Priory
Since the census was taken on the 3rd/4th April and Easter was on the 16th April that year, there may have been other English pupils who had gone home for the holidays.
The school took children who were both Catholics and non-Catholics. The boarders went to mass three times on a Sunday and there were daily services throughout May, the month of Our Lady. They also rose early to attend mass before breakfast and said Benediction at 6 pm before bed at 7pm; “we had to perform long prayers before bed, each girl turned her chair round and kneeled on it leaning on the back.” The non-Catholics had to attend services but did not take communion or go to confession and converting to Catholicism was discouraged by the nuns who said it was a big decision.
Pupils were day girls or weekly or termly boarders. Many came by train. One mentions that she was “put on the train in Stalbridge in the care of the guard and met at Spettisbury station by one of the nuns." Another “walked to school on Monday mornings, but on Friday evenings, I was picked up by the milk float, and transported by horse half-way home.” A Boscombe family of three who were termly boarders, arrived by horse and carriage and a girl from Shapwick came by pony and trap, riding alone when she was older. She used to leave her pony with friends at Crawford House and walk from there. When the river was in flood she remembered lifting her legs and stirrups up and letting the horse wade through.
In the gardens of the Priory
Spettisbury Station 1910
The teaching nuns were addressed as Mother and there were additional lay teachers who were often former pupils. The working nuns were called Sister, spoke no English and did all the cooking, laundry and gardening; “they seemed to spend their life polishing the stairs.” The nuns are remembered by ex-pupils as being very strict and not slow to inflict punishment. This no doubt accounted for the general belief that the “convent girls were very well behaved.” A wrong note in a music lesson led to a rap on the knuckles with a thimble. Other misdeeds meant kneeling on the bare floorboards in front of the class or outside Mother Superior’s Office and going to additional Confession. One pupil remembers being punished for keeping her vest on at night. The boarders were taught deportment by having to walk around balancing a book on the head and were told to sit upright. There was to be no slouching and no crossing of legs; this was thought to be very unseemly.
The girls entered by the main front door, which had a slot with a shutter through which the nuns peered to see who was there. This led into a large hall with lots of religious statues and a wide curved staircase. Narrow dark corridors led to the rest of the ground floor and a spiral staircase led to the chapel balcony. There were four classrooms beside the chapel. A single WC on the ground floor served the school, plus “an awful earth closet” in the garden. One pupil recalls the school buildings and classrooms (since demolished) with windows overlooking the river from where she used to “watch the floods come up.” Another, who was a young pupil in 1922 recalls that the nuns lived in the main house and the priest (Father Graham at that time) lived in the Priest’s House (now the Village hall). He remembers being taught in a classroom on the top floor of the Priest’s House from where he could see the nuns doing the laundry in what is now No.1 St. Monica’s Priory. There was a courtyard where Jubilee Cottage now stands.
In the gardens of the Priory with Father Graham
On Saturday afternoons the girls who were boarders were taken for walks – usually along the footpath bordering the road and into Blandford. Sometimes a walk was taken along the river bank and across the meadows (the “bridges” walk.) The children walked in “crocodile” with one nun leading and another bringing up the rear.
The school also had many other extra-curricular activities such as concerts and pageants.
One former pupil remembers an end-of-year concert involving an ark with all the pupils hanging out of it. Some girls also went to France for a couple of years to improve their French.
Scripture Union 1917
Pageant 1920
Some of the younger pupils and nuns outside the main door of St. Monica’s Priory
Children and nuns outside St. Monica’s Priory about 1917
Lessons which were conducted in English included the Catechism, Mathematics, English, French, Geography, Needlework (very fine embroidery) and piano. All boarders had to write home weekly. A nun read the letter and if a letter had ink blots it was pinned to the girl’s back for everyone to see. All meals were taken in the refectory in complete silence at long refectory tables, with grace said before and after meals. Children had to sit with their fingers on the edge of the table until they were allowed to begin eating. Bottled water was drunk with meals as the tap water was not drinkable; wine was drunk on feast days! The girls were expected to eat everything and leave a clean plate. One pupil recalls being caught trying to hide a piece of tough meat up her knicker leg and subsequently being made to kneel on the floor for punishment. The boarders slept in dormitories with fourteen beds, one with curtains for a nun. Once a week they were allowed a bath. A nun undressed each girl down to her vest, then shut her eyes and handed her a gown open at the back to put on and wear in the bath. In the gardens of the Priory were tennis courts and a cricket pitch. The pupils played croquet, “which we didn’t much enjoy”, netball and lacrosse. For the boarders, recreation time was after supper when the girls played charades and other games in the front hall.
Some of the girls at St. Monica’s about 1919
The garden of the Priory is remembered with affection. A pupil who left the school in 1920 aged 18 said “It was a lovely place with its rear gardens going right down to the river.” There was a wide, main path known as “la grande allée” (along which all nuns and girls would process carrying the cross on saints’ days) and a summerhouse by the river.
One rumour current amongst the pupils at that time, which seems to have persisted to the present day, was that “ there was a subterranean passage from under Reverend Mother’s study or office going to the rectangular walled garden beyond the railway and, maybe to the quaint Round House on the hill opposite, which had belonged to the monks. The tunnel was supposed to have been built so that the monks did not have to go through the village to cultivate their garden.” This rumour has never been substantiated.
When the Ursuline school at St. Monica’s Priory closed for the last time in 1926, the local village children who had attended transferred to the Hall and Sloper Village School in Spetisbury.