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Books: The School at Skelton Hall
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6544
Author:  JB [ Mon Sep 07, 2009 12:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Books: The School at Skelton Hall
The School at Skelton Hall was published by Max Parrish in 1962 and reprinted by Girls Gone By in 2008. Other books published in 1962 were A Future Chalet Girl and The Feud in the Chalet School.

This is an abridged synopsis from the New Chalet Club site (there is also a version on the site which includes “spoilers”):

Sally Martindale, age 14, is unhappy at the large High School and longs to go to a small boarding school where she'd have a chance to really get to know people and the mistresses would have more time to help students. She accepts that, due to family circumstances, this dream is unlikely to come true. Then a letter arrives from Sally's godmother, offering to send Sally to a new boarding school which her other god-daughter, Ailsa Skelton, is opening in Sussex. Sally is thrilled and phones her great chum, Myfanwy ('Van'), only to find that the mothers have been talking and Van is going to Skelton Hall, too.

On the train the girls meet their new schoolmates, including Harrie, Hilary and Lal, their roommates in the Blue Dormitory, soon to be known as The Quintet. Bespectacled Harrie, an avid reader of thrillers, senses there is something suspicious about the attics, which are out of bounds, and the east wing which Miss Skelton's uncle let to an old friend before his death.

The Quintet, caught up in schoolwork and expeditions, pay little attention to Harrie's mystery until Sally wakes in the middle of the night and hears strange noises and sees lights in the east wing. The girls think that they may be able to find a way through the attics to the east wing and find an opportunity to have a duplicate key made to the attic door. Having discovered the secret, the girls make frequent visits to the attic. One night Matron catches Sally returning from the attics and demands an explanation of the duplicate key. Sally refuses to tell what she has been doing. Reluctantly Miss Skelton places her in solitary confinement in the San.

Eventually the secret is explained, Sally is forgiven and the girls look forward to the next term at Skelton Hall.

Did you enjoy the book?
Do you like the characters of Sally and the rest of the Quintet?
Do you think we see enough of the school as a whole or is there too great a focus on the Quintet and the mystery?
As in The School at the Chalet, EBD is writing about a school’s first term, how do the two books compare? Do we see the traditions of the school being formed?

A transcript is available - PM me if you’re having trouble finding it.
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:28 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: The School at Skelton Hall
I smiled at the start of this, because the CS absolutely always prides itself on its size, almost from the very start, but here you have a girl who's always wanted to go, very specifically, to a tiny boarding school. She keeps complaining about how her high school is too big, and there's no time to get to know anyone (?) and the teachers always go too fast, and she thinks she'd do much better at maths if classes were smaller.

(Though, ironically, despite the fact she gets put in a tiny maths set at her tiny new school - where the total student body is fewer in number than her old high school form - she's still a maths dud. :cry: )

Also, given the emphasis in the CS on school legends and history, it's nice to be in at the start of a brand-new school. The Head does a lot of talking at the start about how the girls are going to be the ones to determine the kind of school it will be, but then that peters out rather, and we go in to a quite Angela Brazil-ish mystery/ghost/locked doors/mysterious sobbing plot, which more or less then turns into The Secret Garden minus the garden. Which is quite fun in itself, and I like the Sussex setting, but given that she sets up an interesting situation, with a small brand-new school setting up, it seems a pity EBD doesn't follow through on that part, given that the development of the CS ethos is so interesting...?

One wonderfully EBD touch is that everyone, girls and staff alike, is obsessed with 'streaming colds' (not just any old colds, but 'streaming' ones). And there's one completely mad punishment - when Sally is found out of bed in the middle of the night and refuses to say why, she's kept in solitary confinement for over a fortnight!
Author:  JayB [ Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: The School at Skelton Hall
I remember reading this when it was fairly newly published. I enjoyed it but it didn't hook me the way that the CS did at the same time.

Rereading more recently, it does seem slight compared to the CS. We don't get so much feeling of Skelton Hall as a school - there isn't so much of the routine of lessons, prep, etc, which make the CS such a convincing world.

I do find the two weeks in solitary unrealistic. I can't imagine anyone at the CS allowing the situation to continue for so long - but of course at Skelton Hall they didn't have Joey to come in and sort it out! It is also unrealistic I think that Sally's mother, who is supposed to be a sympathetic character, should be so unconcerned. I think it was rather taking 'not interfering in school discipline' to extremes!

I quite like Sally, but the other characters tend to blur together for me. I don't think EBD's characterisation is so successful as it was in even the later CS books.

I do think it's interesting that EBD was attempting to come up to date a little, with her discussion of the problems of very big schools where some children get left behind. And this was even before the arrival of the comprehensives with 1000 or more pupils*. But Skelton Hall itself seems quite old fashioned.

*ETA: Just looked, and Sally's school, Langford High, had 1200 pupils. So I was mistaken in saying it was before the arrival of the 1000+ school.
Author:  JB [ Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: The School at Skelton Hall
Jay B wrote:

Quote:
I do think it's interesting that EBD was attempting to come up to date a little, with her discussion of the problems of very big schools where some children get left behind. And this was even before the arrival of the comprehensives with 1000 or more pupils.


I found this interesting in comparison to the very positive portrayal of high schools in EBD's earlier books, although as these were mainly pre-1940s, I guess they'd be quite a different animal.

I was shocked to read that there were 44 pupils in Sally's class at the High School. Does anyone know if this was realistic for the time - early 1960s?
Author:  mohini [ Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: The School at Skelton Hall
I enjoyed the book but thought that too much stress was put on the mystery.
I cannot compare it with CS because in the first book of CS, the school is just starting with few pupils. Here there are plenty of pupils from the beginning ( if I remember correctly) and the Head had very clear ideas about running the school.
Madge made the rules as and when needed
Only thing common with CS is speaking the languages on different days with lessons in those languages.
I liked the book but found some parts a bit boring and I was left wondering why some things were not made clear to the girls. It would have avoided many problems later.
But then maybe there would have been no story.
It again shows EDBs peculiar approach to illness
Author:  JayB [ Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: The School at Skelton Hall
Quote:
I was shocked to read that there were 44 pupils in Sally's class at the High School. Does anyone know if this was realistic for the time - early 1960s?


This would be when the post-war baby boom children were reaching secondary school, so it doesn't seem too unlikely. I know classes of forty or so in primary schools weren't uncommon. (I went to a private primary school and a grammar school which didn't have classes of more than thirty, so can't speak from personal experience.)
Author:  Mel [ Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: The School at Skelton Hall
44 is too many in a private school.They were often chosen because of smaller classes and more individual tuition.
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: The School at Skelton Hall
JB wrote:
I was shocked to read that there were 44 pupils in Sally's class at the High School. Does anyone know if this was realistic for the time - early 1960s?


I was shocked by the fact that there were 1200 pupils in total at her high school!

I thought it was a really interesting set-up, and the start was very richly-written for one of her non-CS books, which do tend to be a bit thin by comparison. And I really liked the idea of a girl who hated being one of the crowd in her huge school and really relished going somewhere absolutely tiny, where she's one of 34, rather than 1200. But I think EBD throws that away as soon as Sally actually gets to the school, which is a shame - it would have been lovely to have Sally noticing and enjoying (or finding weirder than she expected?) the sheer smallness and domestic-ness of everything, and how visible she must have been by comparison, in good ways and bad. (My class when I was 12 had 45 people in it, and I'm very conscious of how strange it would have felt to go from there to a school of 34!)

Plus, she's made the biggest possible school story transition, from huge established day school, to tiny private new boarding school, but there's no sense of her adjusting...? A pity, because Sally and Van are nice, and the setting is lovely (I really like the loads of mini- expeditions to local places of interest - it makes you realise how isolated athe Gornetz Platz is!) and I quite like the mystery plot, but it would have been nice to have the mystery plus more about being at a new school, and the differences of being taught in tiny sets and knowing everyone.
Author:  suemac [ Tue Sep 08, 2009 3:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: The School at Skelton Hall
I started at a secondary school in 1957 and there were over 1,000 in our school. It was a great contrast to my convent primary where there were only sixteen pupils in my year. My SLOC had fifty pupils in his primary school class (1950) - post war population boom.
Author:  janetbrown23 [ Tue Sep 08, 2009 3:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: The School at Skelton Hall
I went to a Technical school from 1960 to 1965, in the last year my form had 26 boys and 13 girls and that was one of the smaller forms. As we were a selective school I have an idea our forms might have actually been smaller than those in Secondary Moderns.
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