For the first time in its recent history there is now a gate directly from LEH School to Hampton School.  The Head Mistress and the Head Master joined forces today (27^th September 2019) for the official opening.  They were accompanied by some of the newest pupils at the senior schools, as well as the Head Girl team and the School Captains, for a ribbon cutting ceremony.

“I never thought I’d see this day,” laughed Sheila Leigh, a mathematics teacher at LEH, who first joined the school in 1984 when one of her duties was to patrol the link fence between the two adjoining schools during break time, come rain or shine.

“The fence and its perimeter were definitely out of bounds to the girls, but they still tried to meet their boyfriends along the fence.  Occasionally they even tried to hug through it, so it was my job to keep them apart. How times have changed! There are now so many connections between the two schools that the gate make perfect sense.”

Current pupils enjoy close links across many areas of school life as they travel together on the same coach network, and Sixth Formers regularly visit both schools for Curriculum Enrichment lessons.  LEH and Hampton also regularly produce joint musical and drama productions and journey across the world on a variety of shared trips and exchanges.

However, it was a very different story when Hampton first acquired the plot of land and LEH applied for permission to erect a “wire of chain link fence on the boundary between their school and the new Hampton Grammar School” in 1937.

Staff patrols of the fence were implemented in the post-war period to keep pupils from so much as even talking to one another over the fence.  Former pupils from the 1970s even recall Hampton Headmaster Gavin Alexander driving his Mini Cooper along the boundary to ensure Hamptonians kept their distance and out of trouble with the LEH Headmistress.

We would love to hear your memories of the fence, so please post your comments below.