Gillian Humphries’schooldays began in 1929 when she was eight and she spent nine years at DWS. Her sister, Diana, followed a few years later but had quite a different experience and was not nearly as happy as Gillian. She felt that it was all about having friends and getting in with a good crowd – if you didn’t have that you were miserable. As a child Gillian said, “I was a bit of a nuisance child really. I would fight quite a lot and was nervy and delicate”. DWS changed all that.

The family doctor suggested boarding school and her parents searched until they found the most suitable one. Home was a farm near Wellington, in Shropshire. It was Miss Arnold, House Mistress at Trem’, who had impressed them most as she was kind and patient, just like Miss Nightingale whom the children referred to as “Aunty Connie”. Even when her parents couldn’t always visit she was contented to stay in school and staff organized picnics and outings for any girls left. It was the friends such as Paddy Seymour Jones and twins, Mary and Jane James from Aberystwyth who made it fun. Paddy’s parents were coffee planters living abroad and her grand parents lived near Gillian in Wellington. Years later she and her family had a holiday home at Borth y Gest and, when in a shop one day in the 1960s, bumped into Mair, a friend from school days. It was always lovely to meet old friends and renew friendships.