The Open Air Class

My attention has been drawn to the publication of the Natural Environment White Paper in which mention is made of teaching children outdoors. In the early 1930s my school, Archbishop Tenison's Girls School in Lambeth, London, had an Open Air Class. Our playground was in the recreation ground known to us all as the Burial because there were tombstones along the walls. It must at one time have been a burial ground. When I was about 8 years old our class spent almost the whole of one year having lessons out of doors.

In one corner of the Burial was a large open sided shed. If it rained there were tarpaulin curtains which were let down on to the low wooden sides of the classroom according to which way the wind and rain were coming from. In the summer it was lovely. We were taught about the trees and plants around us as well as all the other subjects. In the winter we wore our coats, hats and scarves and if it was really frosty we were given a blanket to keep ourselves warm. What fresh air there was we got it even though it was mixed with smuts from the steam trains which ran from Vauxhall to Waterloo on an embankment only yards from our desks.

In the picture I am the fair girl with her head on one side looking rather disgruntled. (Can you look "gruntled"?) The teacher was called, appropriately enough, Mrs. Stillwell.