to the prevailing climate.
The school stands apart from the town. Today it is simply an accident of geography, but in Bronwen’s day the distance had a symbolic value. Town and gown were separate. Dolgellau has long been a bastion of the Welsh culture and Nonconformity. With its winding, narrow streets and grey local stone houses, it was one of the first constituencies to return a Plaid Cymru MP in 1974. Even back in 1939 it was represented by one of the rump of self-consciously Welsh Liberal MPs who followed Lloyd George to the bitter end. The neo-classical Salem Chapel of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, high on the hill above the tiny shopping centre, is still larger and better attended than the squat Anglican church of St Mary’s.
It was to St Mary’s, however, that the English boarders from Dr Williams’ trooped each Sunday for morning service. Alun Pugh may have wanted a Welsh education for his daughters, but despite being in Wales, endowed by a Welsh benefactor and including Welsh language lessons on the curriculum plus a Welsh hymn and an offering on the harp once a week at assembly, Dr Williams’ was effectively a little bit of England in exile. ‘In those days it was as Welsh as any suitable school for us could have got,’ estimates Ann, ‘but that wasn’t saying a great deal.’
In line with its charitable purposes, in addition to its boarders like the Pughs, Dr Williams’ admitted a number of local day girls – around 20 per cent of the total – but these locals remained marginal to the ethos of the school. They were mainly Welsh-speakers – several from hill farms high above Dolgellau – and outside of lessons tended to stick together. Displays of Welsh patriotism were rare enough to merit a special mention. When Bronwen enrolled as a girl guide in November 1942, she told her father: ‘I hope this will console you N’had,* we are having a Welsh dragon on our shoulders to show that we are Welsh guides and not English.’
Most of the teachers and boarders came from across the border, the majority of the latter from well-to-do Midlands families, attracted by the school’s reputation as quietly progressive. If it was not particularly Welsh, Dr Williams’ did have a name for enlightened attitudes. When Bronwen arrived, its character had been moulded for many years by headteacher Constance Nightingale, who was herself drawn to Quaker ideas and who had established a regime with no corporal punishment and none of the decorum, deportment and decorating lessons that dominated many girls’ boarding schools at this time. She aimed to turn out young women with self-confidence and self-awareness, not debutantes. Persuasion rather than force ensured the smooth running of Dr Williams’ and the pupils, in an age when marriage and children were still regarded as the pinnacle of female ambitions, were encouraged to excel in whatever field attracted them – academic work, sports or, if they wanted, domestic science. The atmosphere was not competitive. There was, for example, no attempt to draw up ‘class positions’ at the end of term to denote the cleverest in the form and to encourage competition.
The curriculum was comprehensive, from scripture to science, Welsh to gardening. What time was left over between prep and lights out at nine was filled with uplifting talks by local worthies and travellers, occasional plays and, on special occasions, gatherings in the. headmistress’s private quarters to listen to the wireless. At weekends it was sports – Dr Williams’, in another progressive gesture, spurned lacrosse in favour of cricket, but embraced the more traditionally female netball, hockey and tennis – guide camps, accompanied walks or bicycle rides along the river from Dolgellau out towards the sea at Barmouth and Tywyn, or up to Cader Idris, and finally, on Sunday evenings, letter-writing to reassure anxious parents.
Bronwen’s first letter home was short, stiff and bland. ‘We’ve arrived. Here is a picture of our dormy. I can’t think of anything else to say but I’ll write soon.’ Looking back now, with her psychotherapist’s training and the benefits of hindsight, she believes she was in shock at the alien world that had greeted her. Gwyneth Pugh revealed how the staff allowed her to break her young sister gently into school life by putting them in the same ‘dormy’ for the first few nights. Then they were separated and Bronwen put with girls nearer her own age, though she was the youngest in her form by two years. ‘I was told that Bronwen was to go to Trem [the junior school],’ Gwyneth wrote home, ‘so I packed all her things and she went off. So although Bronwen is at school, she is quite OK.’
Big sister was still hovering in the background the following February, mentioning to her parents that she had been doing Bronwen’s knitting for her. The same letter displayed a touch of exasperation: ‘Bronwen told me the other day that she had lost David’s Christmas present. So I went up to her dormy, opened the drawer at the top and there it was. “Oh, I never looked in there” was the bright remark.’ She was forever losing things.
Gwyneth’s ‘big sister’ attitude is emblazoned on the page of a letter Bronwen wrote home in November 1942. ‘G is in sick-wing. In fact she has been since Monday. It’s her heart again and she’s been working too hard,’ the youngest Pugh reported. ‘I don’t know what she means by this. She’s a bit potty,’ her older sibling scrawled across the offending section. Yet, heart trouble afflicted Gwyneth for most of her adult life and precipitated her early death.
Realising that leaving home and going off to boarding school at such a tender age could be an emotional wrench the Pughs attempted to provide their last-born with other companions – Thomas and Doreen, two rabbits, substitutes for the family cat, Lancelot, who had been left behind. Both survived only a few short weeks in Dolgellau, but it wasn’t entirely down to the inclement weather. ‘This is, I think, the reason for Doreen’s dying,’ nine-year-old Bronwen told her parents. ‘Last weekend it was absolutely pouring with rain and I hadn’t got an umbrella, so I didn’t go to feed them. And on Monday at break when I went to see Thomas and Doreen, she was dead.’ Thomas followed soon afterwards.
Though having Gwyneth around was a comfort and deepened the lifelong bond between the two, being the third Pugh girl to pass through Dr Williams’ had its drawbacks. ‘I was always compared with my older sisters and found wanting,’ Bronwen remembers. ‘We were all three head girls. I was made to feel that I was made head girl simply because my sisters had been before me. My father came to give away the prizes when I was head girl and I remember him saying, “All my three daughters have been head girl here. Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” That last one is the category I came into and I felt put down again. My sisters were better at everything.’
Being seen as part of a package, not as an individual, was part of the reason that Bronwen – or ‘Pug’ as she was known to her form-mates – came to feel trapped within the walls of Dr Williams’. She could never wait to get away from its confines. Her letters suddenly became upbeat and almost frenzied as the end of term approached and were full of references to the landmarks in the build-up to departure – One Glove Sunday, Cock-Hat Sunday, Kick-Pew Sunday. When the weekly countdown was almost complete, it turned into a daily task of crossing off days by means of the name Jack Robinson. It worked like an Advent Calendar. On each of the final twelve days, he lost one letter.
Another source of unhappiness was finding herself in a form of much older girls. In July 1942 the head wrote to the Pughs to suggest that Bronwen be kept down a year. ‘I cannot put it down entirely to her work which reaches a fair average, but she is the youngest in the form and in many ways is much more immature than the others … She is very childish still in her outlook and frequently in her behaviour.’ The transfer went ahead, but even then she was still a year younger than most of her classmates. In retrospect, Bronwen believes there was more to the head’s verdict than academic concerns. ‘I don’t think my temperament fitted in at the school. Yes, there was certainly immaturity. The others were all older. But I think what she was also getting at was that I had this sense of enjoyment and fun – still have it – this ageless enjoyment that people can find very disconcerting.’
Staying down a year did, however, bring about an immediate improvement in her academic performance, though still teachers
