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This story was submitted to the people鈥檚 war site by Rod Sutton on behalf of Graham Gape who collected it from Muriel Carter (the author) for his History of Truro Grammar School and has been added to the website with his permission. He fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

My introduction to Truro County School was on a sunny day during the summer term of 1940. Miss Foreman arranged an Air Raid Drill for my benefit, and we all went out into the sunshine and down into the shelter of the rocky sides of Chapel Hill. Coming, as I did, from a grimmer part of the country, I thought what a delectable place this must be when even an Air Raid Drill seemed merely an opportunity for a short country walk. Alas, by the time I arrived in September, daylight alerts were becoming a reality, the country walk was deemed too dangerous, the school had been provided with baffle walls - two blocking the side doors into the Hall, two screening the front doors, and two making it a test of extreme agility to get in and out of the cloakrooms - the school itself was our Air Raid shelter. Soon, however, we had the shelters built along the edge of the playing field, shelters which we got to know only too well, for although no enemy aircraft troubled us during school hours, there were many alerts. It was at this time too that the doorways from the bottom corridors into the playground were made in order that the school might have as many exits as possible Compared with schools in London we were fortunate and this, of course, made us a desirable refuge for evacuees. We welcomed into the school many girls who had come down to Cornwall, either with their parents or to live with relations. Some of these girls stayed only a short time, others went right through the school. For some time we had, in the school, six girls who were pre-war refugees from Nazi Europe and who lived, during the war, in a Hostel at Perranporth. They very soon settled into school life and did very well indeed. Early in 1941 we were asked to make room for a hundred and twenty girls from West Ham High School, together with their Headmistress, Dr Barnett, and some of her staff. By using every available space, even the dining-room and part of a corridor, as classrooms, we managed to squeeze them in as the Truro County School numbers were then only about two hundred and fifty. A partition of green black-out material screened the balcony from the Hall and made a little room for Dr Barnett and another for her staff. The material was light proof, but it was certainly not sound-proof and the occupants of these rooms must often have longed for peace, but they were amazingly tolerant and good-tempered. We could not have had more co-operative guests. Hardly had we settled down to this new and crowded existence, when the severe air-raids on Plymouth began and we heard that, at very short notice, a large part of Stoke Damerel High School was coming to Truro and would need to use our building too, for a time. For three schools to work simultaneously in one building was quite impossible and we had to work in shifts. Since the School Certificate examination was almost upon us, examination candidates had lessons as usual, but the rest came morning or afternoon, not both. Fortunately other premises were found for the Plymouth school after a few weeks, but West Ham High School stayed with us for two and a half years. It was during this time that the idea of building the Biology Laboratory was mooted. The Education Authority was anxious for us to start a Pre-nursing Course, and with one laboratory only between two schools the time-table was almost impossible already, certainly no additional science classes could have been fitted in. In spite of war-time restrictions therefore, plans for a pre-fabricated hut were passed and before long we had our laboratory. When West Ham High School left us, we had a short period of comparative stability. Numbers were increasing, the Sixth Form could no longer be fitted into the little room on the top floor and the library became its form-room, but we did not envisage any great change. It was a sad and unexpected blow, therefore, when we learnt that the Education Act of 1944 inevitably meant the end of the Kindergarten and Forms I and II, for henceforth Truro County School would be a "Secondary" Grammar School only. The fact that we could now put a sink into the Kindergarten room and call it an Art Room was small consolation when we permanently said goodbye to Kindergarten children. They had been an integral part of the school and we had many younger sisters growing up there too. But the change had to be made and, with its present numbers, the school must find it difficult to believe that we ever found room for these little ones. Of the school's daily life during the war years there is not a great deal to record. When the world is in turmoil, daily routine can be a healthy and steadying influence. Out-of-school activities were not easy to arrange, though the Junior Red Cross Detachment met faithfully and frequently and maintained a consistently high standard. It took part too in the Parade when the Duchess of Gloucester came to inspect the Red Cross On occasions parties of staff and girls went gathering seaweed to be used for medical purposes, and collections of rose-hips and other gleanings all helped the war effort. It was not possible to "black out" the Hall so the building could not be used after dark - except by groping fire-watchers. We had our Sports' Days and Exhibitions, though and our afternoon Speech Days with their dramatic and musical programmes - we enjoyed an occasional visitor - Colin Horsley, the pianist, gave the school a memorable recital - one of our Sports' Days was enlivened by the presence of a representative from our adopted sloop, H.M.S. Weston. In school, we started the School Council and, later, the Parents' Association. During the war, in Truro, we were indeed fortunate in escaping serious danger, and, in spite of difficulties, our interruptions were insignificant compared with those, for example of schools in London. We can, I think, rightly claim that for the school they were years of steady and useful progress.

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