The Dormitory

Sometimes things just come together: One of the retired ladies that come to the house for conversation attends ‘old girl’ events that are held for ex-pupils of the school she attended. This postcard came to my attention recently, taken around 1900 it is the dormitory of a school.

This week I showed her a scan of it when she arrived and she confirmed that it was her old school. Not only that… Last week she attended an old girls lunch and they were discussing the bombing during the war. The school is situated close to a railway line. The dormitory was bombed during WWII and some of the girls and nuns were killed. Someone was at the reunion who was a pupil at the time and she remembers a mother arriving and taking her daughter away from the school just before. The mother told the nuns that she had had a dream about the school being bombed. The old girls discussed this and decided that the mother had probably been warned by resistance members – perhaps!

Prison

On the Ile de Ré, which is just across the bridge from here, there was a notorious prison. Do you remember the 1973 film Papillon with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman? In the film ‘Papillon’ was deported from the Ile de Ré. This card shows prisoners arriving around 1907, A little earlier than the story took place. There is still a prison on the Ile de Ré today.

Unfortunately, although interesting, the postcard is in a very poor state. The stamp has been torn from the front of the card and there are lots of creases.