It's nearly 50 years since the first girls came to Rugby, and so we've been collecting stories about how this came about and how this changed life at the School.

Gill Parker was one of the third intake of girls. Her sister Alison was one of the first three girls at the school. Gill tells us a little more about what it was like.

I went to Rugby in 1978, one of just 31 girls amongst 733 boys. It was the third year that girls had been accepted at the school.

Rugby was not new to me. I'd grown up on campus, as my father taught physics there. He was also a key motivator to let girls in - not just because he had two daughters, but because he believed it would help make the school a more civilised place.

That's why my sister Alison was one of the first three girls arriving in 1975, and I believe, the first girl to be proposed. She was in that sense the first girl at Rugby School. Jill Rogers our local doctor's daughter also joined, along with Alison Miller, the daughter of another master at the school, who came for her Oxbridge term.

The first girls were based in Stanley. My father was a Stanley tutor and I remember the Hares, who ran the house, being very kind to the girls. They were all day girls and so went home at the end of lessons. There was no uniform and they could wear what they liked.

But it was tough being one of the first, especially for my sister Alison. She had already done one year of sixth form at Rugby High School and was 17 when she arrived, sitting in classes with boys who were often 15. She left after just one year.

Looking back, it's easy to realise that going co-ed needed more girls from the start, and more thought. But at the time, I remember a feeling around the school, that going co-ed just needed to happen.

By the time I arrived three years later, there were still very few of us. One of my first recollections is walking to chapel, and realising just how outnumbered we were. How out of place I felt, even though I knew the school so well.

It helped that we now had Crescent House, the first and only girls' house then, run by Ian and Fiona Newton. Downstairs we had some study rooms, with high wooden cubicles each with a dedicated desk and bookshelves. The Newtons lived upstairs, and off to one side was another small wing with bedrooms for the girls.

Most of the girls by now were boarders. But we all ate our main meals in the boys' boarding houses. It wasn't worth building a kitchen for so few girls, and it helped us to integrate. I went to Town House and loved being back with friends, who I'd grown up with at the Crescent School.

The girls still didn't have a uniform, there were no formal scholarships for girls and our ex-curricula activities were also quite limited.

We had a hockey team, though I'm amazed we had enough players to create one! But we didn't play cricket or rugby, and couldn't join the corps. So, on corps afternoons, we did other things like volunteering.

But music and acting were activities we got heavily involved in. Some of us were in the chapel choir and orchestra, and when it came to plays, we didn't have much choice - we were all needed to fill as many female roles as possible!

So how did the boys take it?

Some were friendly, but I found that most kept a safe distance. If someone did dare to talk to you or invite you for tea, then it usually ended up with their files thrown in the gutter or being badly teased. I remember going for tea with one friend from class and having a whole lot of rhubarb suddenly thrown through the window!

So, there were days when it could feel a bit daunting. I often retreated for tea with my childhood friends in Town House, and I am very grateful to this day for all their love and kindness in getting me through.

But my time at Rugby was still amazing. It was the first time I was able to get involved in so much music. I'd never acted before, and the approach to learning was just so different from anything I'd experienced and so vital for preparing me for university.

It also got me used to a man's world. At my university interview, the only real question was, how did I cope as a girl among hundreds of boys? I clearly gave the right answer, because I was admitted to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge as one of the first years of women at the college.

So, I am very grateful to Jim Woodhouse for letting us in. I'm grateful to my father Ronald Parker for advocating for the change. Most of all I am very proud of my sister, Alison, who was brave enough to be one of the first, a true pioneer.