Gillian was appointed as Housemistress in School House in the late 1980s while her son Richard was a boarder at Clifton College and her husband Alan posted to Nigeria in charge of engineering operations for an international pharmaceutical company. It was an arrangement that suited everyone: Gillian established herself as a loyal, trusted and reliable leader of the residential staff at Badminton and a member of the English Department, teaching general studies in the 6th Form, and some junior classes.

Life in School House was always interesting: as Senior Housemistress she had an excellent understanding of 15 and 16 year olds, and her teaching experience was valuable in support of Group 5 taking their GCSEs. It was these qualities that made Gillian the ideal choice to take over the Sixth Form Centre when the post fell vacant and she duly became Head of Sixth Form, responsible for the students’ academic progress, university applications and pastoral care.

It is a measure of Gillian’s success over more than 10 years that the results of Sixth Formers at AS and A Level kept Badminton at the top of the league tables in the West Country, and in the top 50 schools nationally. Results that good for a small school can only be achieved in a settled, ordered and reasonably content environment, which underpins and enhances excellent academic teaching from other staff.

Each summer term 6A Leavers would plan their end of summer term prank to coincide with Governors’ Open Day (filling the Headmaster’s Study with balloons for example). On one occasion they decided to replace the school’s entire stock of cutlery at lunchtime with chopsticks, and hid the cutlery in Gillian’s car boot. It was the Headmaster’s task to follow the clues to find the hiding place, at which he spectacularly failed; so the entire school, governors, staff and pupils had to eat fish and peas with chopsticks.

Gillian and Alan moved to Cyprus for a number of years when they retired, and staff were warmly welcomed there on holiday. They were both keen bridge players as well. They kept their house in Cotham (Gillian was born and bred in Bristol), but she was suddenly struck down by an auto-immune disease from which she never fully recovered. She died in April 2018.
Gillian's funeral will take place at Canford Crematorium in Bristol on Thursday 24th May at 3.00pm.

Clifford Gould. Headmaster (1981-1997)