Hill End Stories is our blog celebrating 100 years of outdoor learning

No.6 – We go on residential into the 1950

What was a school trip like seventy years ago?

Fascinating recollections from an inspirational teacher.

By the 1950s, Hill End had already been welcoming excited children for residential camps for three decades, becoming an established part of the school year for many.

One of its most dedicated supporters was Mr (Herman) David Munday, who began his teaching career at New Marston County Primary School, Oxford in 1951. In the 1980s he recorded his memories of his first trip as a teacher in those early years, which make for charming reading:

“The Hillend of 1954 was quite different from the Hillend of 1981 in many ways. There were no teaching units. They first went up the early sixties.”

“The top dormitories were not fenced off so the cows got underneath and it was quite common to have one sleeping directly beneath the floor boards of the dormitory, and to be lulled off to sleep by the contented lowing of a cow a few feet away. We slept on metal slatted beds with straw paillasses.

It was for them a week of adventure – for many their first time away from home.”

What has changed since then? Our meadows are now grazed by more manageable sheep rather than cows, but the children who visit are still very much immersed in nature, although the beds are a little more modern!

And now, just as it was then, a trip to Hill End is the first night away for many children in 2026, something they can be very proud of, and that they will remember forever.

What has changed hugely is the length of stay. A residential trip today is much shorter due to economic, staffing and curriculum pressures on schools and parents. Now these are typically just one or two nights, with very few able to stretch to three.

By 1959 David Munday was deputy headmaster of Blackbird Leys County Primary School, and later at Bayswater Middle School. He started the first camps for children from Blackbird Leys, bringing 120-125 children each week for a fortnight in the 1950s ans 60s. We are very fortunate to have some wonderful original scrapbooks from those days that set out the timetable for their week’s stay.

“Meal times were highlights of any camp. They didn’t always run smoothly, as on the occasion when dinner drew near, and the butcher arrived with the sausages for one hundred and twenty-five children. Having misread my instruction, he brought with him thirty-two sausages instead of thirty-two pounds as ordered!”

It was common then for staff and parents to cater for the pupils, which is now quite rare, with most schools choosing to have our caterers provide meals to save time during a shorter stay.

In the 1950s, as now, a residential is still an amazing effort by school staff determined to provide this wonderful and life-changing experience for their pupils. Inevitably, not much sleep will be had, at least on the first excitable night.

“If a staff member was on duty at Hillend camp it was a very long day; rising at the unearthly hour of between 5.30am and 6am to get the large boilers on for breakfast tea”.

And years before the phase ‘nature-connection’ became popular, teachers instinctively knew that time spent in green spaces had huge benefits for wellbeing of their pupils.

“We often made the children stand still and just listen to the sounds around them; a cow moo-ing, the cuckoo… and in the evening the nightingales beyond the new middle dormitories. Moments to cherish.”

Hill End was then, as it is now, a place for everyone to experience the freedom of the outdoors, and especially those who need it most.

“To many it was their only break from home and the environment in which they lived… out of the many memories I have, I have chosen two – 1) the thrill a little girl from Blackbird Leys had when she discovered a nest of leverets by the Middle dormitories, and 2) Another girl finding the bee orchid in the top field.”

“I think this sums up Hillend; a place of adventure and discovery, a place where children were taught to use their initiative and stand on their own two feet, a place where friendships – perhaps lasting friendships – were made…

“But above all a place where one learnt that there were other people to consider and other people to live with.

David Munday, March 1981.”

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Munday family for passing on these wonderful diaries, and their continued and much valued support of Hill End in so many ways.

—-

If you have your own memories of Hill End, no matter how old or how recent, please let us know in our new Memory Bank – it only takes a moment, and we’d love to hear from you!

You can read more about our rich heritage on our history pages and our 100 year celebration page.

Join us to celebrate and help ensure the next 100 years are even stronger.