I recently found out that the old girls grammar school grounds I walk in, used to be a Victorian Ladies Boarding School.

I took these two photos, as Robyn and I walked together in the winter sun, she looked up at me and said…”I wonder if the naughty girls used to have to cut birch twigs from these very trees, to make a birch for their naughty bottoms?”

It is impossible to know. Not these, they are too young, but probably on the same spot, yes.

I have spoken to women who went there when it was a girls grammar school, and you see the French doors? The Study to the right is where girls got spanked, slippered and caned on their naughty bottoms. And she said, it was sometimes on the bare.

This is where I imagine my stories set in the ‘Saint Helena High School for Wayward Girls’ to be set.

Asa