Sizewell Hall (School)
Posted by Peter Warnock on December 11th, 2010
Harry Tuyn and his family at Sizewell Hall
Recently we have had several enquiries about Sizewell Hall when it was a School. Do you know anything about it? This picture was taken about 1956 and was supplied by Virginia Peace, fourth from the left. Elaine and Harry Tuyn are in the centre at the top.
Did you attend either the Boarding School or “The Summer Holiday Course”? The following photos are of some of those Summer Schools.
I spend 2 summers at Sizewell when it was an International Summer School where foreign students (up to 18 years old ) came for 6 weeks to learn English. In 1957 I came in April to look after the daughters of the principal Harry Tuyn whilst their German Nanny went on extended leave and the following year I was a staff member looking after “health and welfare” of students and staff. My name is Anneke but (as the then baby could not say that )she called me Ankie. So in this country I am now known as Ankie or Anne!
Most of the male tutors were past and present university students and the female staff came from Sweden or Germany plus a few local ladies.
After 54+ years I cannot remember any names except Kathleen and Haleh a Persian girl who spend years with the Tuyn family and was educated by them. Haleh was the head cook in 1958. On that photo I am standing next to Harry Tuyn and Haleh is standing next to me.
This photo was taken in 1957. Supplied by Anne van Woerden. Where are you now?
Do you have any pictures that we can share on the web with other visitors?
The Tuyn family and staff on the terrace with Kathleen Anderson standing, at the end of the course with Harry Tuyn and Kathleen. She was the secretary and really a Jack of all trades (admin wise) The Tuyns also had a boarding school in Switserland in the winter so Kathleen had a full time post.
The students were not allowed to speak in their own language and if caught doing so they were fined. I can’t remember how much but is was probably 6 pence a time. The money collected in the 6 weeks was used to fund the leaving party! (Anne van Woerden.)
Please contact us and perhaps you can be reunited with past friends.
When the School at Sizewell Hall closed in the later 1950s, Harry Tuyn started an English girls’ finishing school in Château d’Oex, near Gstaad. Harry sadley died in Canada many years ago.
I’m glad to see dear old Sizewell Hall is being put to such good use. I was a pupil at Sizewell Hall School in 1952 until it closed in 1955. It was small a coeducational preparatory school for eight to 13-year-olds, joined for the summer by foreign students.
There were only three or four teachers, including the headmaster, Harry Tuyn, a Dutchman who taught us English, French, German, Latin and Greek by turns! It left me, for instance, with a lifelong passion for literature, nature study and music.
We were allowed to make full use of the 35 acres as our playground, except for the area beyond the pond, which was out of bounds in the summer after a boy was bitten by an adder. What was different from other schools I attended is that we seemed to be one community of children, tolerant of our differences in age, sex and background. One fellow pupil was Sheridan Morley, the theatre critic, whom I see in the paper died not long ago.
I would love to get in touch with others who were there at that time. Robert? Wayne? Gijs? Clara? Arnold? Geraldine? Dorothy? Harleh? Karen? Gretel? Mr Hobson? Miss Acheson? I wonder where you are now. Look after yourselves.
Brian
March 21st, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Hi. I am a journalist attempting to write an article about Sizewell Hall School when it first started in the early 1950s. I would appreciate any memories people have including stories about Harry, Elaine, the cook, Joan Chapman and her partner Ron Hobson.
I too grew up on this coast at this time and have fond memories of Harry and Joan. I am interested in the influence the school had on education and why this area of the coast gave rise to such progressive ideas, the school at Sizewell, AS Neil’s and Britten too.
My email is info@bonisones.co.uk and mobile 07703 716961.
March 21st, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Hi I am Richard Lloyd, I was at the school from 1948 until 1952 and would like to get in touch with Nicky Mikleson, Alison Auld and Sebastion Welford. Please contact me on my email address.
rlloyd@holmburysheep.co.uk
March 25th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
What a surprise to read about others who went to Sizewell Hall school. As well as the Tuyns my memories are of Mr Butters (maths & English?), Mrs Prendergast (matron) and our song “Give me a Home …. where Latin is dry and maths makes us cry” etc.
My parents went to North Borneo in about 1947 I think leaving my brother, Michael, and me at Sizewell. I had a wonderful time but sadly Michael became very ill and after 2 years or so we were taken out to Borneo (Sandakan).
Memories: dragons’ teeth and looking for amber on the beach after a storm; climbing the huge Cedar tree; watching tennis matches by climbing on the cut-in-half boat on either side of the court and cutting my leg; riding; enjoyable lessons; playing Jacks in the long school room on wet days and volleyball, wet or dry; the stairs; communal hair washing in a steamy bathroom once a week; the dormitory, my bed and looking glass which I still have and I also have my napkin ring; roller skating down Picadilly and sleeping in Thorpeness old water tower when friends’ kind parents took me out in the holidays – I wonder if anyone remembers me?
I plan to visit Sizewell on 27th June staying for 2 nights at the next door campsite and trying my daughter’s patience showing her the things that I remember so vividly. Unfortunately I do not have any photographs.
Leonie Lorimer
April 24th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Your lovely photograph of the old Sizewell Hall School is of a summer “holiday course” of foreign students, not of the school as such. We were all younger than that and wore some semblance of a school uniform. I recognize the balding young man in the centre of second row of people seated on the steps—a genial Italian, older than the others, who came back several years running, although his English remained rather strange. To the left of Elaine (oh how she left an impression on us!) stands the small, bespectacled Miss Acheson, school secretary and owner of the school’s only car, a little convertible Austin. Everything was delivered and most of the personnel were live-in, although there was some walking to Leiston in the evenings and occasional taxis were called. Perhaps the photograph also shows something of the economic problems that Harry faced. A staff of 13 in a large rented house looking after a holiday course of 34. It can’t have paid, can it? Our school fees, incidentally, were £60 a term when I first went there in 1952.
With best wishes
Brian
I think it might take a book’s worth to tell Boni all my memories, so I’ll email him/her. To Leonie: what fun, have a lovely time on your visit and please report back here in GREAT DETAIL! To Richard: The three names ring a bell with me too. I think Sabby Welford was famous and the other boys were still talking about him when I came in ’52. Alison and Nicky I remember as benign older pupils. Actually everyone was benign at that school. Extraordinary.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Hi Leonni
I was there with you and remember you well.
You may remember me as I was 3 years younger than my brother David. He and the French boy Jeal (spelling?) decided to run away and persuaded me, a non swimmer of 8 yrs old, to go with them in the middle of the night. The three of us walked along the beach in the middle of the night, pinched a boat and rowed down the East Coast, eventually getting wrecked. I clambered ashore……. The story goes on because you then featured in it when we eventually got caught and returned to the school, but I’ll tell you the details another time. Perhaps Boni would like to put it in her book; I have intended to write the whole issue into a book at sometime.
I went back to Sizewell a couple of years ago so prob won’t be going there again in the near future.
Where do you live?
I am in East Sussex and run the Brownbread Horse Rescue Centre, near Battle.
http://www.brownbreadhorserescue.com
and
http://www.brownbreadstud.com
Tel: 01424 892381 893922
June 9th, 2008 at 12:34 am
My email is tony.brownbread@tesco.net
June 9th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Hi Richard
Thanks for ringing this morning; absolutely fascinating to hear names and incidents from the past that were nearly, but not quite, forgotten.
After we rang off I remembered the girls name that I was friendly with; it was Kenreth. Do you remember her?
Wasn’t there a girl called****** Pendergast? I think my brother kept in contact with her after he left. Have a feeling she went to the States.
I slept in a 2 bed dormitory for a while with a lad from London.
Two of the other girls I mentioned were Lee who may or not have been Swiss but certainly had connections there.
There was a boy called Alistaire who nearly drowned me by climbing up on me and shouting for help. We were both rescued at the same time by Harry Tuyn, who swam along carrying us both!
There was once a boy who sang at the table and for a punishment had to sing all through a lunch; he sang “Buttons & Bows” over & over again. Eventually the grandmar (was it Harry’s mother or his wife’s?) got up and played the piano to accompany him as he started to go out of tune.
Best wishes
Tony
Brownbread Stud
01424 892381 893922
January 7th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Tony, I remember Kenreth too but not the others you mention. I was a good deal younger. I’ve been in touch with Clara Olink.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I’m the Archivist at Kingston University and we’re currently working on cataloguing the records of theatre critic Sheridan Morley. Obviously as already stated on here he was a pupil at Sizewell, and we have a lot of his letters home from his time at the school, and the finishing school in Switzerland, which contain some great anecdotes and stories. They also mention many of the names that have already cropped up on here.
We would be very interested to hear from anyone with memories of Sheridan while at the school, and of the school itself- please get in touch at archives@kingston.ac.uk
December 16th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Another extraordinary coincidence only made possible by the power of the www.
I was at Sizewell between 1949 and 1954 0r possibly 1955.
You might be interested to see this which I only wrote the other day [look down to comments; [forgive the poetic licence]
http://intheboatshed.net/2010/12/11/la-pique/
I am fairly certain that Clara Olink [Guys' sister] is second from the right at the top row. Clara, Haleh and Sheridan stayed on after the school closed to study with Harry until they went to University.
Brian, I have often wondered what happened to you; I have photos of a very happy holiday spent at your home, taken with my old Brownie. Were we really that good at Latin. Please get in touch. I live in North Kent.
I met Guys a few years ago when he was running a charter barge out of Snape.
Haleh used to run a restaurant somewhere in Norfolk or Suffolk.
I met Kathleen Acheson a few years before that; I dropped in at the Hall and found her packing everything up.
Jonathan Ormerod went on to Gordonstoun and became Head Boy. I went to Les Volets Jeune, with Haleh, Sheridan and Clara, where I finally learnt some maths from Henry Butter.
I would love to hear from anyone. I have some original, fading Banda, school magazines with strange stories which perhaps others may be able to explain.
Bob
December 20th, 2010 at 8:45 am
Dear Bob/Robert,
So glad we’re in touch again. I greatly enjoyed our phone conversation. I’m sure we’ll meet up during the coming year, although Hungary and Kent aren’t exactly next door to each other.
With best wishes
Brian
January 29th, 2011 at 10:01 am
Hello Peter,
I encountered Harry Tuyn as a very good but demanding professor of Modern British Literature at Renison College, University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada where I was a student in the late 60′s. I wish now that I had inquired further when he alluded briefly to the schools that he had run but he was not a man to be questioned! So I found the brief info on your site very interesting.
Harry also implied that he ‘knew’ Evelyn Waugh when we were studying his work and it is my current U3A(University of the Third Age) research into Waugh and Brideshead Revisited/ Waugh’s connections with Madresfield, near Malvern where I live and attend a U3A Literature Group, that caused me to Google ‘Harry Tuyn’.
I wonder if you know of any further biographical background on Harry Tuyn or indeed if anyone knows more about his contact with Evelyn Waugh.
Growing up in Canada, the school system that I encountered was quite different from what you must have experienced at Sizewell Hall School and I am envious of your educational adventure.
Many thanks,
Beth Payne.
July 7th, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Bonjour. J’ai passé trois étés inoubliables à SIZEWELL HALL (1955,1956 et 1957). Depuis les années 1960, j’ai malheureusement perdu toute trace de celles et ceux que j’y ai rencontrés, bien que j’en garde une image encore très précise et un souvenir très cher malgré les longues années qui ont fait d’un tout jeune homme un grand’père. Je serais heureux de savoir ce qu’ils sont devenus. Bienvenue à tous ceux qui pourront ou voudront bien reprendre contact avec moi.
“Good morning. I spent three unforgettable summers at Sizewell Hall (1955, 1956 and 1957). Since the 1960s, I unfortunately lost track of those I met there, although I still remember very accurately and hold very dear memories despite the long years that have made me a young man’s grandfather. I would be happy to know what happened to people. All who may want to reminisce or contact me are very welcome to.”
November 1st, 2011 at 8:47 pm
I have been trying to find out what happened to both Harry Turn and the school at Les Volets Jaunes, at which I was a pupil in 1957:- I Googled both and the result was your website at Sizewell.
I wonder if you could help me to contact some of the people who were there, at Chateau d’Oex, at that time?
I knew Sherry Morley well – for some reason some of us, including Sheridan, stayed on in the Easter holidays at the end of term, and Robert Morley came out to stay, which was fantastic fun.
I also remember Kathleen well, and “Wol” – Mr Butter, as well ,of course of having very happy memories of the Tuyns and the whole experience I was very sorry to hear that Harry T had died. It was a wonderful place and although I suppose we did do some work, we had an unforgettable and amazing time.
Haleh’s name came up in a letter from one of your correspondents – I remember her well and would love to be in touch with her if she is in the UK? I am also keen to make contact with my great Swedish friend from that time, Eva (Cootie) Lindh. Also Dorothy Leefe.
Would you be happy to pass my email address on to any of these, if you have their emails, then if they would like to get in touch with me they can?
I was Victoria (Vicky) Bowring – now Muers-Raby.I do have some photographs of that time – some with Sherry and Dorothy Leefe, Kathleen, Ione Wollaston, Cootie and others, if any of them are interested.
I look forward to hearing from you. Yours sincerely
December 27th, 2011 at 8:37 pm
You have noted very interesting points! ps nice internet site.