STAFF and pupils at Rye St Antony School had more to cope with than teaching and learning at their new premises.

Their move from North Oxford to Pullen’s Lane, Headington, coincided with the start of the Second World War and all the restrictions and hardships that followed.

As we recalled last week, the school moved swiftly, without planning permission, because it feared the War Office might requisition the buildings for war use.

But in a book marking the school’s 50th anniversary, Ivy King, joint founder of the school with Elizabeth Rendall, says the early years at Headington were not easy.

She writes: “We had to black out all the windows every night – sheets of brown paper, yards of blackout material and gross upon gross of drawing pins.

“Then came the sirens. There were few young and able-bodied inhabitants in Pullen’s Lane to ‘fire-watch’ and we, the staff, had to take our share and were issued with tin hats and stirrup pumps.

“The ARP (Air Raid Precautions) wardens insisted that everyone should remain on the ground floor as long as the alert was on.

“We soon realised that whether or not bombs dropped, our children would be incapacitated by exhaustion from broken nights, so one afternoon, the younger ones were sent for a walk and the rest of us ‘turned the house upside down’, putting the classrooms upstairs and arranging for everyone to sleep downstairs.

“We lived very much like a school evacuated into the country. We grew our own vegetables, we bottled, we jammed. We were used by the ARP in exercises.

“No bombs were dropped, but we had frequent alerts. The German bombers night after night droned over to the Birmingham area and one night in particular, we saw the glow and watched the anti-aircraft shells bursting as Coventry was bombed.

“Oxford was just outside the outer defences of London and during the Blitz, the sky was red with the glow of the fires and we could see the shells bursting as the guns went into action.

“But to us in the school, the most immediate result was a matter of restrictions – sweet coupons, no rubber hot water bottles, a restricted diet, unlit streets, clothes coupons and a shortage of petrol.”

It was only later that Miss King discovered how safe the younger children felt. An old girl who was 10 at the time told her years later that she “knew for certain Hitler wouldn’t win the war because Miss Rendall wouldn’t let him”.

Miss King, who was headmistress of the school from 1957 to 1976, recalls how classes and activities on the school playing field were often interrupted by low-flying aircraft.

“On the morning of the onslaught at Arnhem, we ran to the windows – planes towing gliders seemed only just to miss the tops of our trees. We could clearly see the faces of the men as they passed.”

Pupils and staff joined thousands of others to mark the end of the war.

Miss King writes: “We switched on the lights all over the house and left the curtains pulled back – a thing we had not been able to do since we moved to Headington.

“It was wonderful to see the lighted houses when darkness fell. Bells rang all over the city.

“We all walked down to Oxford that evening to enjoy the celebrations. I have never seen Oxford in a more joyous or carefree mood.”