In the 1930s during the years when the Sisters were required to live a monastic, enclosed lifestyle, there was a strict division between the two communities in the house. The Sisters slept in the 1913 wing and the attic area and used the basement beneath the kitchen (now the students’ kitchen) as their refectory, and as office areas.  The old billiard room was their chapel, and the magnolia room their community room. They used the side door to go in and out of the building. The 6 lay students occupied the main part of the house – sleeping on the first floor, eating in the dining room and using the original morning room and conservatory area as their common room.

Even then there were some contacts between the two groups. The room that is now the library in the front part of the house was used as a venue for interest groups and  visiting speakers – events attended by schoolgirls from local catholic schools, their teachers, parishioners as well as the St Anne’s students. Ex pupils of Sacred Heart schools around the world who may or may not have been living in the house brought their fiancés to tea with the sisters. Sisters also taught catechetics to children who were not being educated in Catholic schools.

During the Second World War the house contributed to the war effort by opening its doors to evacuated children from the Sacred Heart primary school in Hammersmith. The children, who lodged with families in town, were taught in the large rooms in the house as well as in buildings lent by the Society of Home Students off the Woodstock road.  Students helped especially with managing and entertaining the children between classes and at weekends. A large part of the garden was turned over to vegetables, ducks, and rabbits. A pair of German prisoners of war appear to have been befriended after hostilities ceased – there is a record of them being entertained to tea on Boxing Day 1946 by students who wished to practice their German, and a photograph shows possibly the same pair helping in the garden during summer months.

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