Miss Pybus, Headmistress of Saltburn’s Towers School is pictured c.1940 at Rusland Hall, this was where the Towers School was evacuated in World War II. After the War started, but before the school was evacuated, the boarders used to be taken into the vaults of the Zetland Hotel to shelter when the air-raid sirens sounded. She also remembers having ”midnight feasts”, but with food in short supply thanks to the war, they used to eat toothpaste! Jose Mawson, was a pupil at the Towers from 1937 to 1941; and was there when the school was evacuated to Rusland Hall in 1940. Her great friend was Patricia Burn; other friends were Elizabeth Leathly-Shaw, Hilary Toy, Anne Clinkard, Heather Dorman, Pamela Radge, Marie Locke, Rosetta Bolton, and Joan and Pam Howell (whose parents were in India). After an outbreak of illness thanks to the Rusland Hall drains being unable to cope with the large numbers of people when the school was evacuated, my mother and her sister Helen left the school in 1941, and my mother subsequently attended Durham Girls’ County School. Jose Mawson has memories of the Headmistress, Miss Pybus, had a little white dog called Zeppi, and that all the boarders used to be invited round to Miss Pybus’s house (next door to the Towers) on a Sunday, where they were each given a ”Dainty Dinah” toffee!
Image and information courtesy of Amanda Stobbs.
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