Brigg Blog's memory banks kicked into action to remember when we first started at Glebe Road School in 1960 and then at Brigg Grammar in September 1967.
Senior followers of our site may well have similar pictures that have survived in the family archive.
In our collection we still have a typed sheet sent to our parents in 1967 after we'd managed to pass the dreaded 11+ exam.
It listed all the expensive uniform required - blazer, two pairs of shoes (black for going to and from school to be changed into brown for lessons), art materials to be bought from Jack Clark's shop on Grammar School Road, and much more.
Although he never mentioned it, our dad must have put in a request to British Railways for some overtime at his signalbox to pay for that lot!
The blazers, though, were quality - and lasted.
In many families they were passed down to younger siblings or even to neighbouring children.
We nearly forgot the school cap - to be worn at all times you were in uniform - on or off the premises.
Some of the senior pupils when we started looked ridiculous with a boy's cap perched on their heads, setting off for school after spending time shaving infront of the bathroom mirror.
Yet most of us were proud to be seen in our BGS uniform, with badge on the breast pocket.
As the school motto said: Fortitudine.
That's Latin for strength or courage.
Perhaps the school should have gone for fortitudine vincimus - "by endurance we shall conquer."
They still taught Latin when we were a pupil there, but only to the very brightest boys. And most of us did not attain such dizzy heights, or get anywhere close.
PICTURED ABOVE: Setting off for school on the first day from our prefab home on Brigg's Woodbine Grove. That's us on the left alongside Tommy Kennedy, David Andrew and Ian Stapleton.
PICTURED BELOW: Life at Brigg Grammar School in the late 1960s, with boys in uniform, including caps, coming down the drive (bottom left). French and Maths masters Vernon Atkin and Harold Stinson are top left, with headmaster H. B. Williams tending his garden, top right. The other view shows the canteen and cricket pavilion - both now demolished. This montage was used on the front cover of the excellent DVD/video The House That Jack Built, converted from a cine film made in 1968/9 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the school.
I didn't start school until I was 5 and a half,....I was meant to start just after my 5th birthday, but I caught whopping cough and thereafter, I was needing to recuperate at home in front of a coal fire and eat bread in warm milk for ages...
ReplyDeleteWhen I got to school, I was automatically put into the 2nd year of infants.
My biggest regret at the time was seeing other children playing in Wendy Houses and kept wondering why I didn't get a turn.
On reflection, such children were the 1st years...a year I missed.
Our teacher had white flimsy hair, which look like that of the fictitious mad professor.
Her motivation for learning was a chair spindle, which she used frequently to crack over our knuckles if we got our letter formations a bit squiggly.
I recall on one occasion of having a Wicklow on my forefinger and I couldn't hold the pencil properly. I was practising my double line 'u's, which despite my efforts to attain perfection and be awarded with a gunned star, the appeared on the paper as if they had just come out of a freezer and were shivering with shock.
The infamous chair spindle came down on my knuckles including my very tender finger...it didn't half hurt!
When I graduated to junior school, the overwhelming popularity of individual letter practise continued...lines and lines of them.
The pencil, however had been replaced with a wooden pen with an extremely had nib that would unexpectedly become springy and flick ink everywhere.
Those were the days of rows of heavy iron desks with ink wells and folding seats.
Nevertheless, we managed to stay amazingly keen...being chosen to be the ink, or the milk monitor was a great achievement.
By contrast, junior school was comparably less blood-thirsty than infant school....
During my formative years, schools seemed to have harsher environments within the classroom, but health and safety conditioned appeared to be more relaxed, or non-existence during break time.
ReplyDeleteFor example, we were allowed to go out of school during breaks to get sweeties from the local shop.
Comics were also an vital commodity during our early school years.
I even remember charging down enmasse with the rest of the infant school to buy the first issue of the 'Topper'...one lunchtime....the shopkeeper quickly sold out...circa 1953.
A few years later there was mass exodus from the school playground to get the new 'Beezer'..this came with a clapper...a triangular shaped card with folded paper gummed inside...and when flicked, the device made a clapper sound.
Both comics were of unusual size...the size of a traditional tabloid newspaper...so big that it often smothered a young child.
This craze on comics was supplemented by 'Swaps'..some lads use to arrive at school with a bundle of 'Americans'...Superman...Spider-Man..and other super-heroes..one could exchange one American for another American, or 2 British for 1 American.....this custom was prevalent well into my early teenage years.
Similarly, football cards (found in certain bubble gum) were eagerly swapped.
Such comic interest affected out playground activities....tying our gabardine Macs around our necks and then stretching the Mac behind our backs, we use charge up and down the playground as Superman making whooshing noises.
It was, however, a bit disappointing that however high one jumped as one ran, no-one actually took-off.....but imagination and hope was enduring.
Another popular activity was Dinky toys.....Stirling Moss and Fangio were heroes and again, we rushed down to the local sweetie shop to get a Dinky racing car for 6d, which when then flicked along the playground....the one which went furthest without overturning won...some boys brought to school a 'racing car tool set'....essentially a tin of 3in1 lubricating oil to drip on the Dinky cars' axles...in the antipation that they would travel further..
My Dinky cars were always numbered 7 and were British Racing Green....Stirling Moss's car....although I had a red one, which travelled further, but it never felt to be an achievement unless Stirling won.
During this time....the Polo sugar cube was introduced....I can remember queueing for a cube, a bit different from the queue for the nut nurse.....
.....talking about Polio sugar cubes.....there was, on reflection, an amazing number of kids who wore callipers in the 1950's...
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, it was quite common to see men with only one leg on crutches...or a guy with only one arm...I was too young to appreciate that most were war victims...then there were those bath-shaped, wicker vehicles with a small, smokey engine powering the rear, cycle-size wheels for the disabled......walking home from school we had to push one desperate guy up a hill to the nearest garage...I musf have been under 7 and half at the time, as we moved house after that...
As a 7 to 8 year, we had responsibility and expectations that would be unthinkable nowadays.
ReplyDeleteFor example, I would chop kindling to light a fire: run errands down to Lucy's to get granny a packet of five Woodies (they were sold in a green paper wrapperfor the reward of 4 Flying Saucers for a penny (a farthing each)..
But there were rules - no crossing main roads, otherwise a little bird would inform Mum! Nevertheless, walking one and half miles to and from school, I had to cross a dual carriageway - but this was ignored.
On the way home from school, I would often call in to feed the Co-Op fray horses at their coal depot near a rail junction. I can still smell the mix of horse manure and the smoke from a coke barrier.
My Mum use to work and I would often wait in a shop doorway, singing, How Much is that Doggy in the Window and/or I Love to go A'Wandering'......a man use to come out of the shop and give me a couple of chocolate burbons ....until Mum's bus arrived..
Other favourite activity of mine was to climb down the coal hole leading to cellar, then climb the wooden stairs and then repeat...great fun... (on reflection, it would have been a easy way to burgle our house)..but we didn't have much to steal apart from an upright piano and an green Indian carpet my Dad brought back from the war.
Even the wind-up gramophone and the 78rpm records were old-fashioned,even in my day...There was one favourite 78, which I repeatedly played...'Picking My Nose and Eating It'...!!!
Law enforcement had different priorities: one could get fined for not having a bell on one's bike ...or for playing footie in the street...2/6d a the magistrates court. There was a big carfuffle with the council when my best friend's Dad's motor-bike and sidecar dropped a few oil drops on the pavement when he was parking the bike in the garden.
The fact that we - adults and kids had a bonfire in the street every Nov 5th and repeatedly destroyed the tarmac was ignored...but every street community was at it....