Huyton College

Huyton College was an independent day and boarding school for girls founded in England in 1894 as the sister school to

The main school buildings were predominantly mid-Victorian converted domestic homes. Large building programmes had taken place in the 1930s, 1960s and 1980s to extend the school. The school buildings and grounds have now been redeveloped into private residential housing.[8] The four main boarding houses are now residential homes for the elderly.^[9]

Boarding

At the time of its closure, the main boarding house names were

In the early days of the school, girls wore long dark skirts and white blouses.[11] By the 1960s, the school uniform was divided into two seasons, winter and summer. It was available from George Henry Lee, a branch of John Lewis based in Liverpool. The winter attire was a blue Harris tweed coat, and skirt specially woven for the school in Scotland, and nylon, later cotton, sky blue blouse, a navy tie and a Navy blue wool sweater. A felt 'pudding bowl' hat was also worn in the winter. A black full length wool cloak with a cowl hood lined in felt with individual house colours was also part of the uniform (red for St Hilda's, yellow for St Margaret's, green for St. Mary's and blue for St. Clare's), worn by both boarders and day girls to keep them warm whilst running back and forth from houses. The summer uniform was a black wool blazer, cotton Calpreta print dress (again in house colours) and a straw boater with blue trim.

School chapel and choir

The centre of spiritual life in the school was the chapel, with its Royal School of Church Music registered choir. Canon Donald Gray was the School Chaplain in the 1970s and early 1980s; he became the Rector of Liverpool and then Chaplain of the House of Commons, Rector of St Margaret's, Westminster and Chaplain to the Queen, and was well known in the Church of England for leading the 1980s rewrite of the Order of Communion service, amongst others. The school chapel was used on a daily basis for both morning prayer and until the late 1970s, evensong (for the boarders), as well as Sunday services, baptisms and confirmations, and choral concerts. The chapel choir recorded albums in the late 1970s ^[12] and late 1980s, and appeared on television during the semi-finals of the National School Choir Competition in 1983.^[13][14]

World War II evacuation

During the

• Rex Harrison (b. 1908) Actor
• Mary Arden
  DBE (b. 1947), Judge
• Andrea Boardman (b. 1968), TV presenter
• Barbara Pym (1913–1980), Novelist
• Deryn Rees-Jones (b. 1968) Poet

References