School House - At Home
We are fortunate to have rooms of classic Georgian proportions; the high ceilings and sash windows in every room create light and space and provide a balance to the business of communal living. Common space is generous:
The Living Room is the ‘everything’ room and has a family kitchen feel to it; it’s where we chat, snack, do the crossword and just spend time with each other. The girls can store their own food here, make use of the kitchen area and everyone plays their part in keeping it clean and tidy.
The Games Room offers pool and table-tennis as well as a variety of games of the quieter kind such as board games and cards, right through to the noisier options including a dance mat and pogo sticks.
The Lounge is the chill-out room and is home to the TV (complete with Freeview) as well as a small library of fiction to which the girls regularly donate. The bay window (which framed our Christmas tree in December) looks out onto the school’s lawns and it is a lovely thing to sit under the window in the warmth of the sun when there might still be a Yorkshire chill in the air outside.
The Quiet Room is a calm white space. It houses a large white table and chairs and is used by the girls at their leisure as a work space, or somewhere they can do art, crafts or just be quiet. There is no formal weekend Prep so the Quiet Room provides a space in the house for independent work without encroaching on bedrooms. The Housemistress is a firm believer in separating work and relaxing space and there are no desks in bedrooms for the benefit of the girls’ wellbeing.
Girls share bedrooms, which are all equipped with a sink, according to age and there will be up to four girls in a room. Generally at least one bed is kept spare in each room in order to be able to welcome flexi-boarders into a ‘lived-in’ space. Years 7 and 8 girls live on the first floor very close to two members of the house staff; older girls live on the second floor close to a third member of house staff and the Housemistress also lives in the building.