More photos.

Read her reminiscences of Life at MIH at the bottom of this page.    

April 1964

The annexe with Sulaunian - April 1964

Mary - April 1964

Margo, Catherine, Mary & Gwen - April 1964

Catherine, Margo & Mary - April 1964

May 1964

Inebui, Abbas, Margo, Jean, John, Sam & Gwen - May 1964

Mona - May 1964

The boys playing football - May 1964

February 1965

Indroo, Ratnakara, Mary, Singhi, Ruby, Chopra, Chander, Catherine, Karia, Sulariman, Roshan, John & Kirshnan - June 1965

Mary, Chander, Roula, Catherine & Roshan - Summer 1965

Roshan, Mary, Chandler, Roula & Catherine - Summer 1965

Mary, Claudette, Antony, Chander, Lenia, Indroo, Brian, Gwen, Bruno, John, Jaffa, Manik, Krishnan & Karia - 28th November 1965

Benny, Pal, Wayne, Chander, Catherine, Al, Gwen, John, Antony & Claudette - January 1966

Paul, Catherine, Paul Crompton, Chander & Krishnan - Summer 1966

My Reminiscences of Life at MIH    1963-66

One of the many things I shall always be grateful to my father for was his recommendation that when I got a place to study at Manchester University I should apply to live at MIH. And so began three of the most intense, mind-broadening and happy years of my life.    

Born in Manchester during the war, I had lived a sheltered life mainly in the Black Country and deep in the bosom of the Methodist Church, my father being a Methodist minister.  I’d never knowingly met a Catholic, never mind a Hindu or a Moslem.  At MIH I was thrown into a world-wide melee of people and from the very beginning I lapped it up.  It was a door opening in my life which has not and never will close.  I breathed the fresh air of internationalism for the first time and I still thrive on it.  I shared a room, not only with Catherine from Gateshead but with Mona, a Druze from Lebanon and with Chander, an Indian Kenyan.  I sat for hours talking to Indru and  Karia  from India, Winston from Trinidad, Roula from Greece, Sulaiman and Khamis from Zanzibar, Roshan from Iran, Mr. Tahboub from Egypt, Abbas from Pakistan, Sam and Ruby from Ghana, Margot from the States, and Chiam from Hong Kong, to mention but a few.  Then there were all my British friends including Paul, Peter, Jean, Anthony, Mary, Mike and dear, maddening John.  A slip of a girl just out of school, I had a lot to learn.  Many of the overseas students were mature people doing post-graduate degrees.  They attended a range of institutions too – not only the university but the polytechnic, the teacher training college, the school of music, the art college etc.  And between us we represented a very wide range of academic courses and brought a wide range of experience.  Many of us had our own circle of friends outside MIH and that enriched us too.  Sadly I eventually lost contact with every one of my friends there except for my room-mate and soul-mate, Chander, whom I visited recently for the first time in 35 years, the journey taking me excitingly to Montreal.  I just wonder if anyone reading this will be a friend of mine from those far-off days and would like to get in touch again. 

In the 60s the women shared two or three to a room in the main house and the men all had single rooms in the annexe at the back.  Sitting up in bed with a late-night drink and munching cream crackers with Catherine and Chander, chattering and laughing, is still an abiding memory.  The lounge was the usual place for chatting – we would be thrown out of the dining room after meals so the staff could clear the tables; or in good weather we lounged in the garden, which was considerably bigger in those days, or we kicked a football around. Increasingly as I became a longer standing resident I would go over to one of the men’s room and stay there till all hours – quite against rules and regulations.  My behaviour became suspect in the eyes of Mr. Flynn, warden at the time, an avuncular though rather stern Northern Irish Protestant. 

MIH was a haven for me from the stormy seas of my academic course.  I was doing a degree in social administration, involving many subjects which I hadn’t studied at school.  I found them a huge challenge:  some I took to easily, like economic history and local government; some disturbed me because I hadn’t studied human beings scientifically before, such as sociology and anthropology but which nevertheless were fascinating; and some I grew to loathe in a way that made it difficult for me to pass the necessary exams, like philosophy and economics.  I was not a natural academic and I found the going really tough.  I had to work hard in order to get the required results. That was why MIH was such a haven – I needed somewhere to feel secure, familiar and accepted.

 It did not prove to be very successful however at keeping me on the straight and narrow path of Methodism.  I entered MIH a rebel in that respect and after a brief flirtation with MethSoc in the university I soon severed my links altogether with the Methodist Church.  I ‘shopped around’ the Christian churches in Manchester throughout my 3 years there, for the first time in my life savouring the many different forms of worship and belief from Catholic to Christian Science and ended up with the Quakers in Mount Street.  (I did miss the Methodist hymn-singing though.)

 Whilst at MIH I got engaged to my boyfriend from schooldays who had gone to Bristol University.  We had made a deliberate decision to test our relationship by opting for different universities.  He occasionally came to visit me for the weekend, being put up in one of the annexe rooms, but it wasn’t easy.  I formed some intense friendships at MIH and in particular there was one man who will always be on my conscience for the way in which I treated him.  Muhammad was a saintly man who was deeply religious and also extremely sensitive. He was a brilliant man doing a post-graduate diploma in nuclear physics but also very skilled in many different ways.  He was very good-looking; indeed he had everything going for him - and he was deeply in love with me.  Our tortured relationship lasted well after we both left university but in the end I married neither him nor my fiancé.

 MIH is still vivid in my memory and I shall be grateful to it till my dying day.  It enlarged my horizons onto the world; it provided so much laughter and learning and it was the backdrop to some of my most intense emotional upheavals.  I developed hugely as a person in those three years; I left my childhood behind and became an adult.  It was an exhilarating and traumatic time and this place nurtured and held me through it all.  How can I thank you enough? 

Gwen Backwell (nee Ion)

January 2007