Teaching
in the early 1950s was regimented, by this I mean we recited our vowels,
basic word sounds and of course the alphabet. In our sums we almost sang
our multiplication tables, and until to this day these small cerebral
calculations remain part of my daily life. Our names were worn on a board
around our necks until we knew each other well enough to remove them. The
playtime ritual of a gill of milk, a straw and cod liver oil capsules was
at ten o’clock. Most of those capsules went through a hole in the
floor to feed the mice. They must have been a healthy bunch. Then home for
dinner at twelve and back to school, a nap, heads resting on desk for
fifteen minutes at two o’clock, finish at four. Not
a bad day really.
Time
to introduce our headmistress. Well, if anyone was in charge it was most
certainly Miss Wake. What does one say about this matriarch of the
Knottingley teaching establishment of that post war era? Yes, she was a
fine teacher but above all a very strict disciplinarian. Whenever she was
around in her blue teaching smock you could hear a pin drop. If you spoke
or misbehaved she had a unique way of dealing out instant punishment. This
was to grab your hand, demand a clenched fist and rap your knuckles with a
wooden twelve-inch ruler that she always carried. On reflection, it did
not do us any harm and I now know where the saying - a good rap on the
knuckles - comes from. This was our first introduction to school
discipline for bad behaviour, now sadly lacking under the current system.
Christmas
is a magical time when you are at school especially if you are five years
old. We sang carols, trimmed the classroom and made a card for our
mothers. I can never remember us having a Christmas tree because it was
probably still too close to the war.
Then there was the school nativity
play. The usual thing, manger with a pot doll, three wise men in dressing
gowns with a tea towel fastened around their heads with an elastic belt.
Oh, and paper beards edged with crimping shears. Gifts for the baby Jesus
in old gift-wrapped cigar and shoeboxes. Then there was the angel. We were
very lucky, because in our class we had a professional. Jennifer was no
stranger to the stage; she appeared in the Kay Sisters Charity Show at the
Town Hall. She wore her white ballet dress and carried a silver wand and
boy did we admire her. I know that I did for many years to come and
eventually we did develop a good platonic friendship in our teenage years. I
was the donkey in the play.
I
felt a bit of an ass because I had to wear paper donkeys head on
my head that looked rather like the hat Napoleon wore on the eve
of Waterloo, but unlike "the little corporal", instead
of facing sideways the nose and large ears faced forwards. I can
still remember to this day the first one liner that I ever spoke
in a play…"He loves everyone". I rehearsed and
rehearsed that line at home for days and finally delivered it in a
loud commanding voice that made my mother and grandmother proud.
Or so they told me afterwards.
My
grandmother now lived in one of the newly built early 1950’s Manor
Fields Bungalows and Mondays being wash day at home I always went to her
for dinner. The meant that I had to negotiate the cows and bulls in the
fields around the Manor Farm, through which I was told there was a public
rite of way. The cows did not pose much of a threat because they were a
docile lot, usually at lunch chewing quietly in the field down by the
river. The main problem was getting through without the farmer catching
sight of me because for some reason he did not appear to be aware that it
was also public footpath for young children. Many are the times when I
have been turned back for no other reason than I was a small boy walking
to school. But if my grandmother decided to go shopping down Aire Street
and she was with me, it was never a problem. This human frailty was
confusing to a small person of five, six and seven, making one very
suspicious of the mind of some adults.
I
made many friends during those early school years at Chapel Street, many
of whom stayed with me for the succeeding years spent at junior school.
There was Harry; he formed a gang made up of nearly all of the lads in the
class. Naturally, not wishing to be left out, I became one of those
terrifying hoodlums. Harry of course was the ringleader, don’t ask me
why because he was a small diminutive boy, possibly the smallest in the
whole year, but, so was Napoleon and Hitler and the people followed them.
Then there was Pete. He ran everywhere, to school, from school, around the
playground. Every time that you saw Pete, he was running. And David,
always known as Copper, he was a good-looking lad and the girls loved him.
Later in junior school he started to groom a Tony Curtis hair cut much to
the frustrations of the rest of the lads who all tried in vain to copy his
style.
Then
there was John who became one of my best friends and we stayed together
until senior school dictated that we went our separate ways. Geoff was a
different character though; he was very studious and destined to become a
fine musician. Even at that early age he had started to play the piano. I
can remember us being so impressed when the teacher asked him to come out
and show the class where middle C was on the keyboard. He did it
confidently and with his usual knowing smile. Up to that point the tonic
sol fa scale was still confusing the rest of us.
There
were others of course, some of whom became personal friends and those whom
remained on the periphery of my life. One especially I will introduce in
later pages, because he is far too interesting to miss out. However,
little did we realise that within two year all of this would change and
the class would be split into two due to the ideas of people who occupied
the fine old building at the front of the school. This was the education
office of KUDC, later to become the new Knottingley library when it moved
from the small single room at the top of Bridge Street.
It
was at this time in the early 1950’s that a new school was being built
in England’s Lane. It was a modern, open plan building with courtyards
and landscaped surrounds. It had large low windows not like the high
windows at Chapel Street and Weeland Road. When they were built it was
considered to be a distraction to learning if pupils had a view onto the
outside. Even the toilets were inside at Englands Lane. There would be no
more trekking over a cold wet playground in response to a call of nature
at that school. On reflection I can never remember a child asking to be
excused, although I do remember the almost daily search for the inevitable
child smells.
Miss
Grimshaw must have had a nose like a bloodhound. She hated smells but we
just sniggered like children do. Miss would go round asking each pupil to
stand up; skirts would be lifted much to the embarrassment of the girls
until the culprit was finally identified. I always thought it fortunate
that the boys wore trousers, we were certainly never asked to drop them.
In
that last year at Chapel Street I was reading anything that I could get my
hands on. Road signs, shop fronts, shop window advertising and of course
comics. After we had read our weekly funny rag we would swap them. I
always had the Topper; Harry had the Beano and John the Dandy. I do not
know what Geoff had, but I hardly think that even in those days it would
have been the New Musical Express.
A
maiden aunt of mine had two main attributes, first of all she was a fine
pianist, the other was that she had an excellent grounding in classical
literature and she was determined that some of this was going to rub off
onto me. Each month she bought me the latest Classics in Pictures series,
of which issue number one had started with Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson. By Monday morning I had read it three times,
I knew all of the characters and the name of the ship the pirates went on
to find the treasure. I even studied the map of the Island to find out
where the loot was buried.
That
same morning we were asked by Miss Wake to illustrate what we had done
that weekend, so I drew the picture of a ship in full sail. When asked
what it was, I said confidently that it was the Hispaniola. "Really"
she asked, "And what is that". Now, I thought it
was pretty obvious, so I was a bit indignant with the answer. "Well",
I retorted. "It was the ship that took the pirates to Treasure
Island of course". She was gob smacked, and asked how I
knew that. "Because I have read the book", I
answered. This
was my moment of triumph.
Now,
why is that teacher never believe their pupils? Miss Wake made it in her
way to see my mother when she came at lunchtime to take me home. "Oh
yes Roger read it over the weekend". Still unsure of how a
seven-year-old had managed to do this, I was then asked to stand out in
front of the whole class and tell everyone the story of Treasure Island.
The funny part of this was that Miss Wake never quite discovered how I had
managed as an infant to read this classic of English literature in a
single weekend, draw the ship and then tell the story, complete with
character names. A
bit like finding middle C really. Oh,
and apart from that I had also been taken to see the new film with Robert
Newton as Long John Silver. So I was well versed. That’s
it Miss Wake, the secret is out.
At
the end of the final summer term we had a surprise visit from a Mr.
Treadgold, the Headmaster at Weeland Road School. He appeared to us as a
genial, portly man who smiled a lot. Miss Wake or ‘Wakey Wakey’ as she
was now known, introduced her class as being his new pupils after the
summer holiday. I do not recall what he said but what he did not say was
that he was to retire and that Mr. Wilfred Radley, who quickly earned the
nickname of Chad, would take his position. That was the one and only time
that we ever saw the legendary Mr. Treadgold.
Memories
of Chapel Street School remain vivid in my mind. It certainly set the
scene for all of my future years at school. Knottingley was a tough but
interesting place to be brought up in those early days after the war. The
strata’s of society were many and varied. There were children from so
many backgrounds. Some of them were dressed very poorly; some lived in
atrocious housing conditions. Several came to school not having had
anything to eat or drink. The teachers were aware of this and ensured each
had milk and vitamin supplements. Virol was one favourite, it was
administered by the teacher from a large desert spoon at the front of the
class in a very Victorian fashion from a brown screw top jar. That morning
ritual reminds me now of the Phiz illustration in Charles Dickens Nicholas
Nickleby in which Mrs Squeers can be seen administering brimstone and
treacle to the boys of Dotheboys Hall.
Strangely,
I do not remember anything of my final day at Chapel Street School, but I
do know that we all stood around the piano and sang ‘Onward Christian
Soldiers’ of course, and ‘Barbara Allan’, a very profound
traditional song for seven year olds to sing or understand, although it
was recorded many years later in the ‘60’s by the Everley Brothers.
When
the division of our class eventually came, those living in the England’s
Lane sector of Knottingley went to the new school with the indoor toilets.
On a bright sunny morning in September 1952 the rest of us went to Weeland
Road School our seat of learning for the next five years and the usual
trek, with which we were now so familiar, across the playground.
Roger Ellis
Also by Roger Ellis:
Sunday School Days
Legend of the Iron Man