Gresham Mural

2007 - RESTORATION OF GRESHAM COMMON ROOM (taken from old records)

Many of you will remember the mural in Gresham Common Room. It was painted in 1878 by the SHCJ Sisters and schoolgirls and was inspired by Cornelia Connelly’s commitment to the arts.

Over recent years the mural had fallen into disrepair and there were sections of it missing and crumbling. After many years of neglect the Society have funded its restoration, and the work was done by local artist, Lucinda Bothwell, who used old photographs to guide her.

The mural is a very exciting piece of work which shows clearly something of what was happening in girls’ education in the late 1870s, almost 130 years ago. At the time the school at Mayfield would have been very small indeed and all pupils would have been full boarders. There are, in the SHCJ archives, some marvellous photographs of all the students in the school, of Old Girls in splendid hats, and of school plays and performances for Reverend Mother’s feast. The girls normally went home only for a few weeks in the summer. During the other holidays at Christmas and Easter there was a holiday programme rather than the usual school curriculum. They very often put on plays, sometimes in French or Italian as well as in English. Plays were also part of school life generally. Cornelia thought drama was very educative and important.

The room which we now know as Gresham Common room was used as the school hall when the painting was executed. (For many years afterwards, it was the nuns’ community room, before being made over to the school again.) The wall was painted by the nuns and the girls together as a backdrop for their plays. The rather Italianate nature of the scene reflects the sorts of plays they put on.

This mural is a rare piece of concrete evidence of what they did and what they were capable of, and everyone is thrilled with the way it has been restored. Apart from anything else it reminds us that the school was not just Cornelia; there were other nuns and lay staff and gifted students around doing interesting and creative things.

While this mural was being restored, careful attention was also being paid to the improvement of the room as a whole. Wonderful wooden shutters have been added to the tall windows, to enable complete blacking out of the room for projections onto the wall, new carpeting, which works well with the patterned tiles on the huge old fireplace, now covers the whole floor, and a dais is being built to enable better presentations. We are now simply awaiting the news lighting which will complete the effect. This room is used for some drama lessons, large staff or parent meetings, and gatherings that are too large for the Courtyard or too small for the Concert Hall.

The photographs reproduced here for you give an idea of what has been happening, but do come along and have a proper look at the marvellous wall-painting that is the result of such dedicated work, both at its beginning all those years ago, and throughout this restoration.

2023

Lucinda Bothwell, a local artist based in Ticehurst gave a Tea Time Talk to Mayfield Scholars about her work restoring the beautiful wall mural in Gresham. She carried out this project fifteen years ago and vividly remembered having to touch up the foliage on the trees and bushes and other elements in the painting. Some parts also needed to be replastered and Lucinda had to create a special blend using horsehair to match the original composition. She went on to tell the girls about various other mural projects she has worked on, both in the UK and internationally, and some for very famous clients. Success did not come easily to Lucinda, however, and she was very open in sharing her journey to her current stage of life. Having dropped out of art college, she pursued various other careers involving weightlifting and managing a modelling agency before finding her way back into art.  Lucinda offered a fascinating example of hard work, resilience and persistence in pursuing your dreams, and it was lovely to see the girls engaged and asking lots of pertinent questions.