CALLING all Mill Mount School 'old girls' - your former classmates need you!

There has been a regular reunion of school old girls since Mill Mount Grammar closed in 1985.

Originally, it was a class reunion of those who started at the school in 1940.

Later, that was expanded to those who started at the school between 1940 and 1945, then took in those who started up to 1955.

Now Doreen Adams, the Chair of the Mill Mount Reunion group, wants to open it to any 'old girls' who ever went to the school.

"Our numbers are diminishing now, so we want to invite anybody who would be interested," she said.

Doreen - born Doreen Simpson - started at Mill Mount in 1940.

It was an all-girls school - boys went to nearby Nunthorpe School. There was a strict wartime dress code at Mill Mount, covering everything from sportswear to shoes, blouses, dresses - and even stockings.

"Owing to the difficulty of obtaining long black stockings... the following are allowed: either long black or long fawn stockings," reads a copy of the wartime regs Doreen still has. "NB: stockings must either be wool or lisle, but not silk or artificial silk."

The headmistress in those days was a Miss Nichols, recalls Doreen. "She was very strict! You avoided going to her room."

Both Mill Mount and Nunthorpe became grammar schools in 1945.

Doreen left in 1946. "The war was over," she said. "At Mill Mount, if you couldn't go to university, the school arranged for you to work at Rowntrees or in the railway office. I went to Rowntrees." She is now a mother of three children and grandmother of five, living in Brighouse with her second husband Derek.

Mill Mount and Nunthorpe Schools merged in 1985 and became what is now Millthorpe School. The All Saints Upper school is now on the site of what was once Mill Mount.

But the school reunions have continued.

This year's reunion will be held at the Holgate Hill Hotel on Saturday September 20, starting at 12 noon. Tickets £14 to be paid on arrival.

To find out more, contact Doreen Adams on 01484 380177.