Wednesday 18th December 2013
Julian Butler writes:
Hello Danny,
Lately I’ve been casting my mind back to Gloria Sloper. I recall you mentioned her in your reply about the Fancy Dress competition photo in June 1950. She organised a Dancing Display in the park on the same day.
It must have been in 1956 or so, when I was eight, that my parents enrolled me in Miss Sloper’s Dancing School in Boreham Road. Those self-conscious memories of dancing about in her studio – the front room of the house, I think – remain after all these years. How long I stayed there, before embarrassment got the better of me, is unknown, but it can’t have been long.
A later memory is of attending a fete in the gardens of St Boniface College and there is Miss Sloper again, with her dear little cherubs in tutus.
At one time or another both my older sisters attended Miss Sloper’s. So not only did she play a fascinating part in my own family, but in so many other families in Warminster.
It would be wonderful to hear from anyone else who remembers Gloria Sloper; and if any other information about her were available I would be very chuffed to hear of it.
My sister Moreen told me with great certainty that Miss Sloper’s house in Boreham Road is the one now numbered 34.
Best wishes.
Danny Howell replies:
Thank you for that, Julian. It seems, from the large number of people I have gathered recollections from, that Gloria probably taught most of the young people in Warminster to dance in days gone by, long before television’s Strictly Come Dancing gripped the nation. There are various mentions in my books and archives about people who went to Gloria’s home at 34 Boreham Road, to learn dancing before embarking on courting and wanting to woo would-be girlfriends/boyfriends at the Town Hall ‘sixpenny hops’ and other social functions. And, as you rightly say, the Gloria Sloper Dancers, her troupe of little hoofers, entertained at many fetes and attractions in Warminster.
In my book Remember Warminster Volume Five, the late Doris Houghton recalled her friendship (from school days) with Gloria and how the two of them worked together at Harraway’s Nurseries until Gloria went on forestry work on the Longleat Estate during the Second World War. Also in that book is a photo of Gloria sat on a swing with a dog.
I have my own personal memories of Gloria. She would buy my books and come to my book signings. When she died I played a part in connecting her solicitor with her family members after Gloria’s friends expressed concerns about Gloria’s funeral and the need to settle her estate.
Gloria came from a very well-do-family. As a child she had the best of clothes and because my grandparents (very much at the opposite end of the social scale) knew the Sloper family and lived not far from them, my mother when she was a tot, received many of Gloria’s hand-me-down and beautiful clothes.
I have done quite a lot of research into Gloria’s background and very interesting it is too. I will publish this information, for you and other dannyhowell.net readers on these pages. I’m sure you will find it an intriguing insight into a person you probably only knew as the dance teacher who put you through your embarrassing paces in her front room at Boreham Road. In the meantime, perhaps, readers of this website are welcome to contribute their recollections of Gloria.