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Camden New Journal - by SIMON WROE
Published: 12 July 2007

Reunited - friends, teachers and pupils celebrated Parliament Hil girl school's centenary

Celebrations as a girls’ school turns 100 years

Pupils, teachers and friends reunited over afternoon tea

LONG-lost friends, old teachers and former pupils were all reunited on Saturday when the well known Parliament Hill girls’ school celebrated its centenary.
The School in Highgate Road took a trip down memory lane, with people flocking back from across the country to relive their giddy school days.
Amid the reminiscences, it seemed that “Parli” – as it is affectionately known – continues to exert a strong pull over its pupils.
Lily Lipetz, who went there as a student from 1970-78, returned to teach there 20 years ago and is still there to this day. “I loved it here – it definitely made me want to teach,” she said. “I always wanted to come back here, although working with the teachers that used to teach me was a bit bizarre at first.”
Fran Hazelton, a pupil from 1958-66, is a retired historian who recounts myths of Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) as a hobby.
But old school friends reminded her of how she had always been a storyteller, albeit of more risqué sort.
She said: “One lady remembered me sitting in the gardens reading aloud passages from Lady Chatterly’s Lover which I can’t even remember doing. This was in the early 1960s when that was a really controversial book.”
And more than 70 years had passed since 83-year-old Betty Pearce saw her friend Joan Halwood. Mrs Pearce, who lives in Malden Crescent, said: “It was a wonderful day. I hadn’t seen Joan since 1939, when the war started and everyone went off to St Albans to continue studying but I stayed at home with my mother.
“First of all I didn’t even recognise her but when I realised who it was we really went back such a long way.
“It was such a happy thing – well worthy of the 100-year centenary occasion.

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