Skegness Magazine

Source: Skegness Standard 4th October 1961

Gran may remember – Eccentric High School Head

Memories of the days when grandma wore a gym-slip give another glimpse of old Skegness, through photographs discovered by Mrs R Miller of 14 Tennyson Green, Skegness.
She was removing an old picture to make fresh use of its frame when she found, being used as a backing, a stiff sheet with half-a-dozen display photographs advertising the merits of the Essendon Girls’ High School, Skegness.
“They might bring back memories for some local grandmothers,” said Mrs Miller when she brought them into the Standard office. Her guess was that they were taken around the turn of the century…
A little research revealed that, during a typhoid epidemic in Lincoln, mistresses and pupils of Essendon School moved “en masse” to Skegness. The school was re-opened in the large building on the Rutland Road – Ida Road corner, which is now the Masonic Hall. The original pupils were boarders, but at this time, the early years of this century, there were no girls’ high school in Skegness, and many local young girls began attending the school.
Legend has it that the head-mistress, Miss Pagan, was a somewhat eccentric character, who spent much of her time studying the stars and writing horoscopes. She also held a firm belief that thew school was haunted!
But Miss Pagan was an excellent literature teacher, and her school was famed for its Shakespearean performances. Much attention was also given to the teaching of history and music.
There were around forty girls at the school, between the ages of eleven and eighteen, many of them daughters of old Skegness families, some of whom still live in Skegness.

A refined form of torture for genteel ladies

A reminder of the days when photography was a refined form of torture for the subject. These pupils of the former Essendon School – uncomfortably posed – are probably now represented among Skegness grandmothers.