Cliff Turner, now aged 91 and living in New Zealand, continues his 1930s childhood memories of growing up in Brigg ...
I remember quite a few of the boys: Bruce and Alan Bratley, sons of the Glebe Road head-master; John and Pat Cabourne, sons of the Grammar School art teacher; Desmond Tingey and "Gent" Draper. There were at least four other boys but their names have left my memory.
We received a few coppers for each attendance; it was paid to us quarterly.
I now wish I had enquired more about Dr Rowbottom. He was from a local family. I was told that he had worked with my Grandad Turner as a cabinet maker for J T Kettle, but it never occurred to me to ask how he achieved a doctorate in music. He cannot have been very ambitious as I believe he spent his life in Brigg teaching children the piano and as choirmaster and organist, which seems to have been poor reward for his studies. He lived on Bigby Road, close to our house in Princes Street. A brass plate by his door said he was Mus.Doc.
This puzzled me for a long time until I found that it meant Doctor of Music. In 2009, my niece Gillian gave me a photograph of workmen which came from my brother John's house after his death. I am convinced that Dr Rowbottom appears on the picture with my Grandad Turner.
In 1938 I stood with some other boys listening to the radio through Dr Rowbottom's open window and heard Len Hutton make his record-breaking innings of 364 runs in a Test match against Australia.
We had two choir practices a week. Tuesday evening was for the boys only and one for the full choir was held on Friday evenings. Most of the time was taken up rehearsing the Psalms scheduled for Matins and occasionally we rehearsed an anthem in which the congregation took no part. The only one I remember was "Nearer my God to Thee".
The vicar was Fred Burgess; I visited him in the autumn of 1951 to arrange the calling of the Banns of Marriage between Clifford Reginald Turner, Bachelor of this Parish, and Nancy Jones, Spinster of Liverpool.
Of the men choristers I remember Horace West, the licensed lay reader; Dick Leaning, the verger; GW Cabourne and Joe Neave. We also had women choristers, only two I think, who came to choir practice and on Sundays sat in the front pew of the church and did not wear cassock and surplice.
When Ken and I went home after one Friday night practice we found our parents had bought a radio, or, as we it called it then, a wireless. As we did not have electricity it was powered by a large dry battery, about the size of two bricks, and a low voltage battery called an accumulator which heated the filaments of the electronic valves. The dry battery lasted a few months and as a new one cost about ten shillings its expiry caused something of a financial crisis. The accumulator was similar in principle to a car battery but because it was only required to produce a lower voltage it had fewer plates and was consequently smaller. It was taken weekly to be exchanged for a fully charged one at a cost of sixpence.
At that time the BBC had its own dance orchestra conducted by Henry Hall so we soon had the latest songs by heart. South of the Border; Red Sails in the Sunset, The Isle of Capri come to mind.
Having our own wireless meant that we no longer had to go to Nana's house to hear George V give his annual Christmas Day speech. Dad was a great royalist.
At that time the King's annual address to the nation was still something of a novelty, the first one having taken place in 1932.
To return to school days: from Miss Sumpter we passed on to Miss Alice Balls who was certainly the most enthusiastic teacher I ever encountered, and I remember lots about her. One day a load of books appeared in the classroom and we were set to work giving them brown paper covers; I am almost certain that Miss Balls paid for them out of her own pocket. On another occasion she bought lots of bulbs, bulb fibre and pots and we spent a messy hour planting the bulbs.
It was in her class that I read Lorna Doone and The Young Fur Traders and learned the poem The Highwayman. More than eighty years later I can still hear her, in my mind, dramatically declaiming "... where Tom the ostler listened, his face was white and peaked… for he loved the landlord's daughter…" Sadly said daughter did not love Tom but loved the Highwayman and as a result came to an untimely demise.
Miss Balls was very interested in what we used to call nature study and so was I. She used to buy a periodical, Nature Lover, and let me read it.
I remember her praising me for a composition I wrote about birds and she read it out to the class.
One summer evening she took a group of children on bikes to see the medieval church at Somerby, a tiny hamlet about four miles from Brigg. I did not have a bike and was very jealous.
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