Internal Architecture - The Dormitories

When I arrived I had to go up two flights of stairs to get to my dormitory.

It had two heavy wooden swinging doors at the entrance. these were swung backwards during the day so that the dormitory was viewable from the staircase / landing.

Inside was a large room in the shape of a rectangle it had large metal white windows on both sides of its length (looking north and south) and a door at the far end which could be used for fire escape. Either side of this door were two large windows looking west, under which were two single beds.

Stark white lights hung from the ceiling. At each corner of the room was a single bed with quite a lot of space around it. these were the beds of the "dorm pigs". They had space privileges and were also allowed to have a small desk at their bed space area. they effectively had more privacy. When I arrived I found that from these areas arose the aura of menace, the menace of the bully.

In the middle of the dormitory were the beds for the first years and about one third of the second years. there were about 20 boys sleeping in this dorm.

There was so little space for such a large number of boys that the juniors were put in bunk beds. there must have been some eight of these containing 16 children. It was from a top bunk bed that I remememebr watching the torch lights flashing as a first year tried to make it across the dorm without being spotted.

Next to the bunk beds we each had a dull brown coloured chest of drawers for our clothes. In these dormitories there was no privacy for the juniors. we could never escape the eyes of all the others. Anyone could approach me to bully physically or mock and there was no place to which to escape to an intimate area. The dormitory was a place where a boy was under constant scrutiny from the others.

Perhaps that was a key part of the misery of the Goring experience - there was no intimacy possible, as there was no intimate space.

The floor of the dorm was the same as that of the common room - thin dull coloured wood planking. The dorm was a cold hard place. I remember it as physically cold. Above the large main windows were smaller windows which could be opened by pulling a string that hung down. This swung them open so that the small window pane was in the horizontal. These were mostly left open ensuring that the room was aired - and often cold.

Although they had a large south facing side, I cannot remember those dormitories ever having sun in them.