Maria Kasyan discusses her son attending the Polish School at Shephalbury [Text only]

Interviewer: So you came to Stevenage for the Polish School at Shephalbury, when did you come?

Maria: My son came, I brought my son here to the school in 1951 in September to the school.

Interviewer: So how, how did you come to hear about it? How did it come about?

Maria: Because that was the school especially provided for Polish children mostly either they’d been orphans or semi orphans, so you hear about that because all that information was circulated in between Polish people who were here in England.

My twin brother was British Army and he found me after the war and I went to Italy and afterwards when he was coming to England I came with him.  And I’m ever since here, which is sixty years now.  Yes sixty years.  In September I think, I can’t remember the date but perhaps end of September I came here.

Interviewer: So the Polish School at Shephalbury was a boarding school?

Maria: That was a boarding school, that was the board and there was a hundred children in there.  Mostly they were some completely orphan and there were some semi, they have either Mother or Father, either of them.

Interviewer: And how old was your son when he went there?

Maria: Five.

Interviewer: And was that hard leaving your son there?

Maria: It was and it was so difficult because we were living in these camps, that was the camps especially created for the army, for the mob and for the families, so that was first, when we came.  We couldn’t speak English at all. I still can’t!  So that was difficult to prepare children to go to school when you was unable to speak and we come to the decision that we going to speak at home Polish so he’s going to learn proper Polish and then you have the radio, nursery so he will be able to learn proper English, that is what we did.  So when he came to that school all the lessons were in English so that prepare him for the English school.

Interviewer: Did he enjoy being at the school? Did he like the school?

Maria: Did he like the school?  He was a little bit lonely in the beginning, especially little children, you know, and being in strange surrounding and in school like that, like in any school boarding school some kind of discipline and so on that they have to get used to.

It was a beautiful building, beautiful.  It was a mansion, a really beautiful house and the garden, the garden, it was just like paradise, so they can play basketball, they can play football, they can just enjoy the most beautiful place, and that is the reason I was very happy that he was able to be in that school with, as I was working so that was difficult you know, to rush to bring him from there so I can pick, give him to somebody else so when they come to the school by coach to pick him up and so on.  So at least I knew he was safe and I can’t say hundred per cent happy but perhaps ninety eight, but you get used to it and afterwards you know when he was eleven, and that time you have to have eleven plus.  So he had eleven plus and he pass and then he went to Alleynes Grammar School where he finished.