EVERY FRIDAY EVENING, the girls would go into their form rooms and write a copy letter to their mothers. In the days before cheap telephone calls, texting and email, it was the only way for them to communicate. A best letter was written on Sunday for posting the following day.

Back in the 1930s, a letter posted on Monday really did arrive on Tuesday. Mothers would then write their replies, which were delivered to their daughters on Friday, ready for the whole routine to start over again.

During the eleven years that Barbara was at the Masonic school, she never once forgot to write and neither did her mother fail to reply.

Barbara luckily discovered many of the letters she had written home all those years ago, in her father's old writing desk. The earliest ones are very short and the spelling was not always perfect. The staff corrected as many of the mistakes as they could, but then a little seven year old does not always copy things correctly.

Several of Barbara's letters requested things from home, like stamp hinges for her album, marbles, coloured paper and glue and scraps of fabric, because she was always making things, knitting or sewing clothes for a teddy bear, or taking something up to bed to sew.

Unfortunately, a seven-year-old does not have a great deal to write home to her mother about, and in the 1930s there were far fewer subjects relating to children's interests than there are today. One topic featuring prominently during Barbara's time at Weybridge, was her 'little garden', which she looked after by planting bulbs and flowers and noting their progress in her letters home.

And of course the other subject that came up repeatedly, was counting the number of days and weeks until the end of term: ... it doesn't seem there is only a week to go, does it? and we will soon be having our home clothes on our beds won't we?

Barbara's first day at the Junior Masonic School, Weybridge.

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