At Brigg Grammar School, we attended on Saturday mornings which when I look back seems to be a bit daft. One would think that the teachers would have preferred a longer weekend, and, since many boys travelled by bus to school at the expense of the Lindsey County Council, money would have been saved if buses ran five days a week instead of six.
I believe Saturday morning school survived until well after the war. To compensate for the Saturday attendance there was no school on Wednesday afternoons.
My first form master was R W Pratt, who always called me Clifford although surnames were used for most boys. He took us for geometry and I think arithmetic and certainly for singing which he taught throughout the school. For singing, he played a grand piano and I still remember snatches of the songs we learned. On the Bank of Allan Water; The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls; Once a Boy a Flower Espied.
One year a choir from school entered the Brigg Musical Festival, for which we had to learn two songs. One started The sky's a fairy field by night, the wind's a shepherd gay. This was long before the word gay acquired its present connotation. The other song was about pirates and started Up with the Jolly Roger boys, and off we go to sea. The only other entry was from a girls' school and the adjudicator did not endear himself to us by saying the girls sang the pirate song much better than we did. Guess who came second!
Mr Pratt was an accomplished pianist; he lived about a hundred yards from school and often as one passed his house out of school hours he could be heard playing for his own amusement. Pause now for funny story about Mr Pratt and his son Cyril who was a year or two younger than me.
The school song was about the Founder, Sir John Nelthorpe, Baronet, whose family motto was the Latin word Fortitudine which means "with courage". The last line of the chorus to every verse was "His motto ours shall be, Fortitudine."
In the song the "ti" had to be held for a period, and when new boys were learning the song Mr Pratt would count 1, 2, 3, while we held on to the "ti" syllable before going on to "tudine".
One day Colonel Sutton Nelthorpe, a descendant of the founder and Chairman of the Board of Governors, visited the school and asked a boy if he knew the school motto. The boy was Cyril Pratt and he replied "Forty- one-two-three-tudine". The Colonel was not a baronet; the hereditary title had died out somewhere along the line due to lack of a male heir and the Colonel descended from a female Nelthorpe who married a man called Sutton. I do not know when the baronetcy expired - must look it up one day in Burke's Landed Gentry.
In Form 3A the Headmaster J T Daughton M.A.(Oxon) took us for algebra. Probably because of his headmasterly duties he was often late in appearing, but most of us mastered simultaneous equations during that first year. I remember him being very pleased with me on one occasion but the following week poor work led to a fall from grace. "How are the mighty fallen" said Mr Daughton. I guessed at the time that the words came from the Bible but only now, more than seventy years later, have I looked them up to find they are from II Samuel ch.1, v. 23.
Mr Daughton also took us for Scripture in our first year and, as with algebra, he was often late. At that time, Scripture was taught in almost all, if not all, English schools. At Glebe Road we learned the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes by heart and although I had lost any religious faith by the time I was 18 I still remember some of them word perfect. It is perhaps illogical but I feel a little sad for people who were not exposed to some of the sonorous language of the Authorised Version of the Bible. Recently, on a TV quiz show, a man thought Solomon was the son of Abraham!
Unlike Glebe Road, where every teacher was allowed to use the cane, only Duffy, as we called the Headmaster, administered corporal punishment. It did not happen very often; most boys went through the school without getting six from a large plimsoll across the back-side. I was twice the recipient.
We were supposed to change from our outdoor shoes into plimsolls before going into school; one day Duffy came into class and checked us out.
About six boys, me included, went to Duffy's study for immediate punishment. My second taste of the plimsoll came after Duffy saw me writing on a wooden window frame for which I received another six. I have not indulged in graffiti since that day.
NF ADDS: The unpopular practice of Saturday morning school ended in July 1968. We know, as we were among the pupils there on the very last day it operated. After that we were educated Monday to Friday like everyone else. Until July 1968 we had Wednesday afternoons off but had to go in for lessons on Saturday until mid-day. By the time some of the boys who lived in far-away Keelby, Atterby and Willoughton got home on the bus, half their Saturday was gone. They had to get up very early to catch their transport to Brigg.
CLIFF'S LIFE STORY WILL BE CONTINUED ON BRIGG BLOG...
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