Website re-build

With the loss of data when MSN closed its free website hosting, the closure of the Hollies Past Pupils' Association in 2014, and on-going family illness that prevents me maintaining it regularly, it is time this website had a new re-build. 

A Friends of this website's Facebook Page  provides another platform for alumni wishing to make contact with classmates.

A Hollies FCJ School Facebook  page (not run by me) is the  sister-platform for Hollies alumni. Both FB groups require membership confirmation from admin.






A new guestbook application has been added to the Hollies website, and  the old domain name hollies-fcj.org has been re-purchased  to make it easier for people who have a copy of the book to find us here again. 

The process of trying to add a comments application to each Blog entry on the main Hollies website proved fruitless - time that is better spent adding data from the printed copy of the old  MSN hosted guestbook. This Blog site is accessed through the Hollies Alumni Blog Tab at the top of the Home page (see pic. above).

I have uncovered more unpublished (and interesting) items in my archives and will slowly update the website with relevant pages.

The Hollies during WW1 - 1917

From Against the Odds pdf

During the War years, fears for the safety of the FCJs in Europe were uppermost in the minds of the Hollies’ Community. Throughout their Retreats and holidays, they looked for news brought to them by visiting Superiors and the FCJs’s written annals, which were eagerly awaited at the beginning of a new year.  

In 1917 they had news of several FCJs escaping from ‘unhappy Belgium’. 

Donner residence, Ashfields, Oak Drive

In the severe wartime winter of 1917, there were difficulties in obtaining coke. One Protestant neighbour [Lady Elizabeth Donner] offered all she had in her cellar, ‘sufficient to tide us over’. When thanked for her kindness, the neighbour replied ‘It is I who should thank you, you have left my cellar in such good order.’ Another time when the coal arrived, on account of a shortage of labour to carry it from the tradesman’s entrance to the cellar, the nuns set about the work themselves. Lady Donner appeared, saying ‘This is not work for you ladies, but it is very edifying to see you do it.’ She then sent her gardener over to finish the work. The Convent School did not want for anything; in spite of the scarcity of provision, ‘friends seemed so generous’.

At the close of the year, in spite of the threat of Zeppelins and brilliant moonlight, their Chaplain arrived punctually at midnight to celebrate three masses for them on Christmas Eve. 

Class of 1978

Reunion

The class of 78 is having a get together next Saturday 17th September at The Elizabethan pub on Heaton Moor Road at 7.30pm.


Other year groups are welcome. 

Reunion 10th September 2016

Not much notice, I know, but I've only just received this notification.

Message from Michelle Hill on the Hollies Website Guestbook.

The Hollies Class of 1980 are holding a Reunion tomorrow 10 September 2016 at the Raddisson Hotel in Manchester, which will forever be the Free Trade Hall to Hollies Girls, the venue for our Speech Nights. I remember them well and all parents attended as it was either attend or send a letter of excuse to Sister Victoire!!! I loved my days at the Hollies and felt really privileged to have attended. It was only after reading 'Against all odds' I realised just how privileged!

You can view this by reading the guestbook entry,

End of year Review

A recent picrture, posted on The Hollies Facebook Page, sparked a discussion about when the tradition, of the incoming Prefects bringing the school year to an end by staging a Review, began.

The earliest Primary Source record I have is a programme from 1967 (no pictures of the Reveiw, unfortunately. )

This was the Swinging Sixties, when the Beatles ruled the airwaves, satire from David Frost and the Magic Roundabout ruled the TV, and Britain ruled the waves.

The Lower Sixth were preparing to take over the duties of the Upper Sixth in the September term. The items  in the Programme included a spoof, called The Decline and Fall  of the Sixth Form Empire.


The pupils were responsible for staging the whole Review. I remember recording the music and sound effects on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. We had just one failure - Silence is Golden failed to play and the poor girl who was sitting alone on stage must have been in agony. Our Head Girl came to the rescue by speaking the lines into a backstage  microphone, but the effect for whuch we were hoping never materialised.

The Magic Roundabout was the tour de force; costumes, music, sound effects, scintillating script - it had the lot - and it managed to assume the  slightly high psychedelic atmosphere as the BBC's cartoon.

My big stage moment came during The Long, the Short, and the Tall, a sketch based on The Frost Report's Class Sketch.

Being little, I played The Short. I was extremely nervous because I had all the best lines, including the punch line at the end - Just you wait 'till I'm a Prefect.

The Decline and Fall of the Sixth Form was satire. It poked fun at the school rules of which we, as pupils, couldn't see the point.

Prefects had the power to sanction lower school pupils for any infringements of the rules (name tapes on  shoelaces is a Hollies myth)












Sister Victoire and the Staff enjoyed the Review (they laughed a lot) and it gave them an insight into the talents of some pupils who they might not have noticed before.

When the tradition of the end of school Review began, no one seems to remember. Comment here if you have any ideas.

Reunion

with Rosemary Breen (Sister Rosemary)

Sr Rosemary in red hat, black jacket

Rosemary Breen will be at Loreto Prep, Dunham Road, WA14 4GZ on Saturday 16th July from 12.30.

 *I will be there from 11.30 to set up. Please bring a small contribution to a shared table. Hope to see you there.

*Helen Thompson

The Hollies' ethos

was rooted in the Foudress' ideal It is as relevant today as it ever was.

Caroline Aherne

has died.  after suffering from cancer for the third time in her life. 

1963 - 2016

Admission to the Hollies, September 8th , 1975, number 9734, Aherne, Caroline Mary, Wincanton Avenue, M23.

TV Comedienne, creator of TV's Mrs Merton and The Royle Family, Caroline was born on Christmas Eve, 1963, in London, the daughter of an Irish railway worker and a dinner lady. Both Caroline and her brother wre born with a rare form of retinal cancer. 

The family moved to Wythenshawe when Caroline was two years old. She attended the Hollies Convent Grammar School in West Didsbury, where she gained 9 As at O level,  and then went on to the (then) Liverpool Polytechnic as a drama student. She worked for a time as a secretary at the BBC in Manchester where she met her co-writers Craig Cash and Henry Normal. Caroline also has a cult following on the Manchester live comedy circuits, and worked for a time with Cash on a pirate radio station, where the character of Mrs Merton was developed. After a few shows, both Caroline and Cash were sacked, but their show was picked up by BBC Radio 2, where the character was further developed, and paved the way for her better known television series later.

Caroline's talent for mimicry has sometimes, mistakenly, been attributed to Paula Wilcox (another ex-Hollies pupil). An early character was Sister Mary Immaculate, the witless Irish nun - possibly based on Aherne's first-hand experience of a convent education. 

Do you have any memories of Caroline from school? 

Digging in the archives

Miss Smith  (History) was invited to the meeting

Sister Victoire entrusted me with items from her Hollies archives when we met in 2000 to discuss the possibility of writing a history of the school.

Recently, I came across School Inspection Reports going back to the early 20th centuary.

















I also found the admission registers that Sister Victoire had saved when the school was closed. These date from 1942 to 1975, the others (1853 - 1942, and 1976 - 1984)  were lost.

Wood Lawn

"Woodlawn was one of those very big houses that Didsbury used to excel at .... "

A little bit of the history of Wood Lawn can be found on the Files page on the website. Wood lawn.doc