Sunday 12 September 2010

First School, 1959-1965

I was sent off to school aged four and a half in 1958. Lowerplace Primary School was about a quarter hour walk away from home and we followed the same route every morning, back home for dinner, back to school after dinner and back home after school finished. It's amazing how the mind has the capacity to remember details from such early life - I can name a commendable number of the class, though some surnames have dropped off I'm afraid.

The Head Teacher was Harry Whitehead - I'm standing in front of him. Our class teacher is Mrs Wormauld and the kids:
Back row: Geoff Hunter, Jimmy Tattersall, Timothy Bate, Thomas Clegg, Gareth Hunt, ?, Alan Telford, Geoffrey Thompson, ?, Graham Nutter
Middle row: John Burke (me), David Nutter, Peter Sinclair, David Hunt, ?, Judith ?, Gillian ?, Maurice Golding (or Goulding?), ?, Robert Brennan, David Clayton, Brett Robinson
Front row: Megan Brown, Pamela Courtauld, Suzanne ?, ?, Think this one began with a C but not sure!, ?, Susan Ashton, Katherine Clegg(?), Patricia(?) ?, ?

Well a few blanks but not bad for half a century on! One of the lads was the last in the school to wear clogs - there was a new parquet floor in the hall and I remember one of the teachers asking him to tell his mother to buy him some shoes as the clog irons damaged the wooden floor.

I found myself for a while in David Nutter's gang - though drifted off when I found with something of a shock that this apparently meant having to fight other gangs... I was brought up fairly gently and fighting, though necessary at times unless you were going to be unmercifully picked on, wasn't something I particularly enjoyed. (With my brother Frank it was a different matter I suppose...)

Particular friends were Brett Robinson, Ian Kilby (who must have been absent the day the photo was taken), Robert Brennan and Maurice Golding whose birthday was the day before mine. There were two reception classes. The teacher we didn't get was Miss Anstess - young apparently, though to a 4-year-old, anyone over 7 looks old... She impressed Dad though...! I can't remember the name of the teacher we had... Each year had a teacher who as far as I remember taught every subject.

I remember there being a sandpit in the class and besides buckets and spades there were all sorts of moulds that you could use to make sand starfish and the like. The building was a long corridor with two wings with classrooms off both sides and - this impressed me at the time - windows not only to the outside of the building but to the corridor as well! In the middle of the morning a crate of 1/3 pint bottles of milk would be brought in and you each got a bottle of milk and a straw. Straws at this time were waxed paper - plastic was not yet all that common, particularly for items where it needed to be so thin!

In common with all older generations, I learned my "times tables" up to the 12 times table by chanting them over and over, "one two is two, two twos are four, three twos are six..." up to "twelve twos are twenty four". Regardless of what they say now about kids learning the tune but not the words we all learned to count and multiply and add a shopping bill in our heads. Electronic calculators didn't exist as far as I knew until I had left school in 1972! The first one I saw was in college and was almost the size of 5 laptops stacked on top of each other. (I was going to say a typewriter but kids wouldn't know what that meant either...)

I would have loved to be good at drawing but in those days I'm afraid I was one of the messiest kids when the paints came out... Something always seemed to smudge! We had blocks of shaped wood that could be dipped in paint and then pressed on the page and I never learned the knack of lifting them off without smearing sideways first. I remember our teacher for one year was Mr Daly - who everyone was frightened of because he shouted quite a bit and I was desperate not to let him see the colourful mess I'd made. Thankfully once he had forcefully moved my encircling arm away and seen the sorry state of what I'd done he merely sighed...

Lowerplace Primary School led to Lowerplace Junior School and then they merged anyway so we still had Harry Whitehead as Headmaster. Our final year teacher was Mr Metcalfe which confused me as that was the name of Nanna and Grandad and how could someone else have the same name if they weren't part of the family? He was wonderful. Though somewhat scathing of the unrealistic exploits of the child heroes in Enid Blyton's books. I loved the Famouse Five and the Secret Seven and the Barney books but he read us "Martin Rattler" and "Children of the New Forest" and used his voice to make all the scenes and characters come alive. Thank you, that man - he awakened in me an unquenchable desire to read, without which my life would have been so much the poorer.

Playing out meant hide and seek, playing catch, tig, hopscotch. Hide and seek wasn't much cop because you couldn't leave the playground and there were only so many corners to hide behind! As we moved up the school we played cricket and football and "Muggins in the Middle" - playing catch with someone in the middle trying to get the ball before it was caught by the one at the other end. By the very end of junior school, talking to girls started to become popular... Up until the last year they were something to be avoided as they giggled a lot and cried too easily - apart from a gypsy girl who joined us for a couple of months and flattened a couple of the fighters in the class with a somewhat more scientific knowledge of fist fighting that completely outclassed them...

When winter came - and in the late 1950s and 1960s that meant snow and ice and lots of it - we made huge long slides by running at a patch of ice then leaping onto it to slide as far as we could. All the repeated goes left a long shiny totally resistance-free slide that would stretch as much as 20 feet or more. The trick was to turn sideways and flex the knees! Great fun, some pain and scabbed knees and elbows but great fun. No one got sued, no one thought it too dangerous to allow. We had to learn - kids don't do that now, they get "looked after" and still expect it as adults. We learned to take responsibility for what we did. Nowadays people sue for damages because they slipped on a spilt drink in a MacDonalds that their own kid threw down in a tantrum. Ridiculous! Don't get me started!

Punishments - well there was having to sit with your hands on your head, sometimes an individual, many times the entire class because we had been noisy. Individuals had to stand in the corner facing the wall. We were smacked, on the thigh normally - wearing long trousers was unknown until you were in your teens. Mostly it was the hand that smacked but if you had been particularly naughty you might get the "pump". Trainers hadn't been invented. For sport we wore plimsoles - rubber soled canvas shoes known as "pumps" that were extremely flexible. When swung they flexed like a whip - being whacked with one of those hurt. Being whacked on the backside six times really hurt. Or you could be whacked with one on the palm of your hand - "Hold your hand out and put the other one beneath it!"

On the hand you could also receive the strap - a two inch wide leather strop that the teacher would swing after wrapping one end around his hand. It wasn't nice and you didn't want it to happen again so most people didn't repeat whatever had led to it. Some teachers got rattled at you and you were likely to get a more informal slap around the head - "having your ears boxed" it was called. Again, no one got sued - if you told your parents, you were likely to get your ears boxed by them too for having gotten into trouble at school. If you were asked to stand up in disgrace and didn't then a teacher would grasp an ear and pull you up! This was nothing compared to what would happen later at secondary school!

School dinners were a shilling a day (5p). I'll say more about them on the secondary school page - to be honest I can remember very little about them at Lowerplace though I stayed for school dinners for two or three years.

Here is the final year class - we would now be 11 years old. Lots of the same faces as before but joined by a few newcomers - Ian Kilby stands next to Harry Whitehead at the top. In front of him is another great mate from those days, Martin Davenport. Immediately to the left of him Alan Telford had become a very good friend too. He lived next door to a great mate of my brother Frank, they were in the year below us, so we spent a lot of time together the four of us.

Mr Metcalfe, one of that great breed of teachers who helped shape us into what we became stands at the left. I am fourth from the left on the front row with a prefect's badge pinned on my shirt. We had moved out of Rochdale to a village, Milnrow during the last year, but we stayed on at Lowerplace School until we left to go to secondary school. Unfortunately as we had moved out of the borough, this meant that for me it would be a different school than all my mates.

We sat our 11 plus - I remember it as being far easier than I had thought, though only a few thought the same as me. Apparently it had a pass rate of only about 10%. I passed and would be going to a grammar school. Those who didn't pass would go to a secondary modern school. What the difference was, I didn't have a clue at that time. Mum and Dad took me to visit Chadderton Boys Grammar School and Heywood Grammar School. They both looked terrifying to me. I was to end up at Heywood Grammar School and - ripples of both excitement and concern - it was so far away we had to go on a coach!

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15 comments:

  1. Hi John

    Very interested to see the class of '58.

    Perhaps I can fill in some of the gaps and offer some alternative names.

    Back row: Geoff Hudson Jimmy Tattersall Tim Bate ? Gareth Snell Tom Wales Alan Telford Geoff Hill ? Graham Hill

    Middle row: John Burke David Nutter Peter Davis David Hunter Rona Schofield Judith Hilton ? Maurice Gowland Tony Greenwood Robert Brennan David Clayton

    Front row: Megan Brown Gail Chadwick Suzanne Vodden Deborah Ratchford ? Susan Pickering Susan Barlow and Patricia Beswick.

    Hope this helps

    Geoff Hill

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    1. I started in 1954.Miss Dex was headmistress then came Harry Whitehead from Balderstone school.Miss Anstead was I think Miss Anstess.Mr Metcalfe was brilliant,it was a privilege to have been taught by him even though he caned me and three others simultaneously including a girl ( Janet Pendlebury) ! This was in our classroom in the "prefab" in the Senior school playground.

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    2. Hi John its Graham Hill here - Great to be reminded of the good old Lowerplace days back in the late 50's. I tried to update some of the names some years ago when I saw your Blog on Friends ReUnited but I couldn't somehow. However I see that Geoff Hill (no relation)has done a pretty good job in the names. On the first photo I can add Keith Butterworth between Geoff Hill and me. I hardly see anyone from those days sadly, other than Susan Barlow occasionally and Brett Robinson who owns a Tile Centre etc in Heywood. Great to see the comment from Colin Bailey also re Brendon Chase - it was one of my all time favourite books at school and some years later I got my then very young brother in law to get it out of the library so I could read it again and only a few years ago I got on You Tube the TV serial of it - Ah Memories. Still living locally (Wardle actually) I go passed the scholl quite often and it always brings back meroies. I remember your younger brother Frank and wonder what he is up to nowadays.

      Regards Graham

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    3. Thanks Graham, Geoff and Russ for adding names which my poor old memory had let slide out my earhole! I can't sometimes get my head around all the changes to the world since those Lowerplace days. I'm not always sure that the current generation has the best of it either. People would go mad now at the thought of a twenty-foot long ice slide. They look at you pityingly if you describe a pea-souper fog, because such a thing has always been unthinkable to them. They can't get their heads round kids playing out leaving home for the day and not going back until it was getting dark without any way of communicating except for walking back home to speak face to face. Graham, Frank is semi-retired now after a career in computing with the DSS or whatever they call themselves these days. Great to hear from you. John

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  2. I started in 1957, great memories, also remember having school dinners for a shilling, my brother Geoff started four years before me. I used to walk to school and had to ask an adult, any adult, to hold my hand and "see me across Queensway" each day, wow imagine the consequences of doing that today. Last year there 1963 Mr Metcalf used to read to us every afternoon in his class, I remember a book he read to us called Brendon Chase. Also remember the long ice slides in the playground, Mr Whitehead headmaster was a real gentleman. I had Mrs Anstead in my mind as Mrs Ansty, and I also remember Mrs Robinshaw, Mr Briggs the caretaker. I went on to Rochdale Boys Grammar school after the 11 plus. I see it is demolished now. Happy days eh! Colin Bailey

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    1. Brilliant Colin, loved the bit about asking any adult to see you across what I remember as a busy dual carriageway road. As you say, that wouldn't happen these days! Thanks everyone who has commented and been in touch since I published this article. You have corrected some of my mistakes (I'm sure there will be more...) and filled in lots of blanks. What a different world it was back then!

      John

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    2. I attended Lowerplace Primary School from 1951 to 1958.

      Miss Dex was the head teacher throughout my time there. My Infant teachers were Miss Kilburn, Mrs Shepherd and then Miss Schofield. In the Juniors I had Miss Fitton, she was very strict and always seemed to wear a brown suit with white vertical stripes. My next teacher was Mrs Crabtree, she had a strap which she used on nearly everyone's hand in the class at some time - I got it because I spelt the word "doesn't" incorrectly. In the 3rd year juniors we had Miss Hibbert, who lived on Clarendon Street and became Mrs Jackson. Some of us went to see her married, She put me over her knee once and smacked my legs for taking home my school book home to finish, when she has already told me I couldn't

      My last teacher was the brilliant Mr Metcalfe, and our classroom was the two classroom annexe in the secondary school playground. He was a really good teacher with us and us and actually knew us as children. We had our first school trip in his class to Malham. I recall taking the Eleven Plus and had to go into the main building. The results came the day we broke up for Easter; Miss Dex read the names of those who had "passed" and they had to stand up - I sat there with my fingers crossed as I was desperate to go to Grammar School as it was a passport to being a teacher, something I had wanted to become. My name was read out.

      Other memories from the last year were being allowed to play on your roller skates at break it was great skating down a hill to a wall with your hands out to stop you. We went swimming every morning to Castleton baths -for three weeks, I was terrified of swimming, but Mr Metcalfe was very re-assuring and by the time we finished I felt much more confident as a non-swimmer! i recall drinking soup from a flask back at school before we started lessons. I also remember buying a warm penny loaf from Broadbent's bakers on Oldham Road on the way to school - we used to stick our thumb inside and eat around it

      Before I went into Mr Metcalfe's class I was scared as we knew he used his slipper. The first time he used it was on two boys; the sound echoed round the room and they sobbed after three whacks each. My turn came for using the girls' toilet and denying it; I got three hard whacks across my backside while bending over. It hurt far more than my dad's carpet slipper.

      I did meet him and was pleased to tell him I was a teacher and wish that I had been able to met him 20 years later to tell him I had become a head teacher, like he did after he left Lowerplace.

      My friends were John Eckersley, Michael Higgins, Ralph Allen, Brian Swain, David Faulkner, Brian Beal, Graham Cain, Ian Buckley, Gordon Wilson, Peter Ogden, Neil Costello and Alan Costello . A boy who became a really good friend when we were at Grammar school and who was in the other 4th year class - was Peter Robinson, some one with whom I very sadly lost contact when he moved to Cork His brother Brett was mentioned by the original contributor.

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  3. Back row: Geoff Hudson Jimmy Tattersall Tim Bate ? Gareth Snell

    The ? mark is me, Stephen Thomson [Steve] my Brother Peter was a couple of years behind. We lived on Kings Road.

    Certainly brings back memories, not all worth remembering.

    I don't remember if it was Lowerplace Jr Or Sr. but there were two events that stuck in my mind, a girl in our class, Susan W? moved to Australia with her parents, there was also at sometime the arrival of another new student from overseas, I cannot remember if he was from the Caribbean or somewhere else, but it was quite a stir, I seem to remember we had some lessons on where he was from.

    Haven't been back to Rochdale or the UK for years, looks a desperate place now when you read about it online. Makes me wonder what our post war parents would think of it now. We can't live in a Clog & Smog memory, but it did seem like happier and simpler times back then with just your homemade Bogey and fishing for Stickleback fish in the canal under the bridge on Kingsway during the summer holidays.

    My two worst subjects at school were History and Geography, I should have paid attention!!

    Currently live in Ottawa, Canada.

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  4. That's me in the back row staring at the sky.
    How amazing Mr Metcalf was. He read the Hobbit to us over a term and then let me take the book home to finish ( I brought it back).He installed a love of reading in me also.

    Mr Metcalfe was married to Mrs Robinson who taught us the times table. Remember the chart on the wall with red stars and silver stars and for the highly intelligent a gold star when you could recite all the table up to 12 times.

    We lived our lives on the canals and in the derelict factories. I must confess that I was the last kid to have clogs. They were red and my nickname was Twinkletoes or Timmy Twink . cant imagine why.

    I don't visit Rochdale anymore , too distressing , although I am coming next year.
    I live in Australia now but remember my early school days , all as has been described above.
    Sticklebacks and clogs.
    Eh by gum
    Tim Bate

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  5. Thanks everyone for the corrections, the added memories and a few bits that surprised me lol. I haven't lived in Rochdale since the mid 70s, but had occasion to go back a bit after the death of a relative a couple of years ago and despite the moans online, the people of Rochdale are still friendly and great to talk to. :-)

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  6. Hi John, been a long time well put together couple of names your short of Jillian Healey, and the so called Carrabian student name was Barry Holt he didnt stay long all them with good memorys will know why, Everytime i think of lower place School and onwards in years reminds me of the film Kes. Yours Jimmy Tatt.

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    1. Great to hear from you Jimmy - I have to admit I don't remember the Barry Holt story! Best regards, John

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  7. Was Judith Hilton Marcus Hilton’s sister ?

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    1. I'll have to throw that open to the wider readership! :-)

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  8. Hi my name is Lorraine Clegg I lived on Alpine drive in Wardle, I am trying to find an old friend Michelle Ralph she lived near the hairanounds pub in Wardle her mum was German and her father was British born around 1957, she was 11 years old when I left for America, does anyone know her?

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