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Messages - Doremouse_Ca

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Devon / Re: St Raphael's House, Torquay
« on: Wednesday 14 January 09 02:52 GMT (UK)  »
To Terry Leaman and cheshiremog, thank you both for the lovely pictures.
I can only relate to one personally, and that is the picture of the great (or main staircase), it looked exactly the same when I was at school there in the sixties.
I love the term naughty boys boarding school, I think that the PC phrase would be educationally challenged boys boarding school. I know I was.
In the National Archives I found a small amount of information.  St Raphael's (for women) established 1866; St Luke's (for men), 1883; St Barnabas (for phthisis patients), 1892. All closed 1959.

Having got into research mode now does anybody where St Barnabas was? and whether it is still standing.
The modern term for phthisis, is tuberculosis.  8)

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Devon / Re: St Raphael's House, Torquay
« on: Tuesday 13 January 09 22:26 GMT (UK)  »
Thanks Shaun for the info on PHS.

When I was looking at the picture of St Luke's and  St Raphael's, the thought crossed my mind that the powers that be are allowed to perform conservation murder.   St Raphael's was a beautiful building and should have been listed rather than destroyed.
Out here in Grande Prairie Alberta, the situation is somewhat different. When the local art museum collapsed, the locals were up in arms about it, (not literally) and want to sell the  individual bricks at 10 to 15 dollars each so they could rebuild to an exact copy of the original building.
Fortunately this did not happen as it was a really ugly place and only 75 years old.
Sorry about the rant, but this is something I really believe in.  8)

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Devon / Re: St Raphael's House, Torquay
« on: Tuesday 13 January 09 05:57 GMT (UK)  »
I attended Pitt House School 1963/64.
I asked one of the housemasters about the history of the school, he told me that it had been a hospital during world war 1. My reply was something along the lines of that we must be sleeping in the original hospital beds, as I remember that little quip cost me 200 lines.
My favourite parts of the school were the great staircase, and the chapel, having been raised anglo-catholic I felt at home in the chapel but could'nt understand such a place in a C of E School.
Now that I've read the various posts about St Raphael's, I understand.

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