A Little History

I'm afraid I'm feeling rather lazy today. I actually have lots of posts I want to write, but the current heatwave in the South-East is rather taking it out of me, so what I'm going to do instead is tell you a bit about Jemima. You've already read about some of her adventures, but here is an explanation of how she ended up at Lowewood in the first place.

Jemima Symington-Gore is 16. She's been sent to Lowewood from a minor public school as her maternal grandparents, who pay for her education, have decided that standards are too lax there. The final straw was when she visited them on exeat one weekend and they found her drunk in their greenhouse in a compromising position with one of the farm hands from the farm next door....
Her mother is famous society beauty the Hon. Arabella Spencer-Smythe, who Jemima does not take after when it comes to looks. Arabella married when she was 19, had Jemima when she was 20 and is generally more interested in partying in London than looking after her daughter. Jemima's father, Hugo Symington-Gore, disappeared in mysterious circumstances when she was 11 and has not been heard of since. When this happened, Jemima's grandparents decided to have the child come and live with them in the school holidays.

Her paternal grandparents live in the wilds of Derbyshire and have little involvement in her life, though she generally goes to visit them once a year. Her maternal grandparents, Baron and Lady Bledlow never approved of their daughter's hedonistic and feckless ways. They didn't think Hugo was a suitable husband for Bella and, having been hoping for a quickie divorce, were most put out when Jemima came into the world 6 months after her parents' marriage. However, they have grown very fond of their granddaughter and are determined that she will NOT follow in her parents footsteps, so have been increasingly strict with her over the past couple of years as Jemima has reached her teenage years and started to discover drink and boys. The greenhouse incident was the final straw, and so they have taken the somewhat drastic step of removing her from Wingfield, the small, independent school
modelled in some respects on AS Neill's Summerhill where she has been a pupil since the age of 7, and sending her to Lowewood instead. Whilst Wingfield is not as anarchic as Summerhill and does have some actual structure, it should be expected that Jemima may well find the rules at Lowewood somewhat baffling once she gets over the initial shock of being there.