A 1960s Childhood in Northampton – Part 4 School Days (Primary School)

Spring Hill

I didn't want to go to school, I was perfectly happy at home, I wasn't used to spending time with other children and my first weeks at school were frightening and upsetting. The school that my parents had chosen was Spring Hill in Cliftonville (it was the junior department of Northampton High School for Girls). At the time it felt very big and frightening, but it wasn't really. It was a beautiful house with a big gravel drive and a lovely garden. Cliftonville was very different and much quieter in those days, there were allotments stretching back towards the Bedford Road on the land which is now occupied by Northampton General Hospital.

In summer we wore red, yellow or green gingham check dresses, a blazer, a Panama hat and white gloves. At first the winter uniform consisted of a navy blue skirt, navy cardigan, white shirt, a school tie, navy gabardine raincoat, a navy hat and navy gloves. Thankfully they changed the uniform after a year or two, to a much more practical blue pinafore dress worn over a mustard coloured turtle neck jumper with a Harris Tweed coat instead of the gabardine raincoat, so I was released from the worry of ties until I moved up to Towerfield. Our uniform had to be bought from Sanderson’s on the Kettering Road, I didn’t enjoy going there, the uniform was expensive and it had to be bought with plenty of growing room so it always involved trying on lots of different sizes and lengths which I detested. We had to buy our shoes from Jones in St Giles Street, which was another ordeal; we had to have indoor shoes, outdoor shoes, black gym shoes and dancing shoes. As I progressed through the school the uniform requirements relaxed a little, but I vividly remember how much I hated my first pair of indoor shoes. They had buttons on rather than a buckle and at age four I couldn’t manage the button on my own. Our school books were also bought from St Giles Street, from a shop called Savages which was not far from Lawrences. I rather liked going to that shop, I could have stayed there all day looking at the books.

Spring Hill

I was terrified of Miss Beasley the headmistress of Spring Hill, but I remember other teachers more fondly. It was a girls’ school, but a few boys attended until the age of seven; we had two boys in our class. In Kindergarten we only went to school in the mornings, and then when we progressed to Upper Kindergarten we stayed for two afternoons as well. From Transition onwards we had one half day each week. Most of us lived too far away to go home for lunch so we had to stay at school. Lunch was a very formal affair with all sorts of rules to be observed, we had to have our own napkins and napkin rings. We could ask for 'small' or 'ordinary' helpings and selected second form pupils (age eight) took turns as servers. The meals were quite nice really but as far as I was concerned Friday was the worse day, fish in parsley sauce with potatoes and mushy peas! I have always detested mushy peas and fish in parsley sauce was not among my favourite meals. After lunch we had ‘rest’ we walked across to the annex and after queuing to collect our rugs from the rack outside the cloakroom we went to the hall, unrolled our rugs and lay down to rest. When we were all settled stories were read to us by the teacher on duty; The Borrowers, Milly Molly Mandy, Dr Doolittle, Sam Pig, The Country Child, 101 Dalmatians, The Moomins, My Naughty Little Sister, Paddington Bear, Little Grey Rabbit and so many more good books. I loved them all and I can remember them very clearly so many years later. Rest supported the formal process of learning to read by nurturing a less formal enjoyment of books.

Our school day was regulated by the shiny brass bell with a wooden handle which stood on the table outside the staff room. At the end of each lesson a second form pupil would be given the coveted task of ringing the bell. The worst part of Spring Hill was music lessons with Mrs Willson who seemed to be at least a hundred years old. She stood us in a semi-circle and graded us according to our singing ability. I was always among the 'growlers' at the end of the row and I have detested music ever since. I loved handwork lessons; we did sewing - making such things as oven gloves and needle cases, weaving, raffia work, painting, making models with pipe cleaners, papier-mâché and junk modelling. I remember spending a whole afternoon making butter in a jam jar.The nature table kept us busy all year round. In spring we collected spring flowers, sticky buds and catkins. Then as spring reached into summer we saw tadpoles emerge from the frog spawn that we had collected. We watched fascinated as the tadpoles grew and gradually became frogs, then it was time for them to be taken back to the pond or stream that the frogspawn had come from. We collected feathers, fragments of birds’ eggs, scraps of sheep’s wool, caterpillars, sea shells, and even empty wasps nests. The darker evenings and cooler days of autumn gave us an endless supply of fallen leaves in rich autumn colours, we made displays of leaves and we used them in our art work. We collected acorns, conkers, berries of every kind and sycamore seeds that fluttered down from the tree spinning like tiny helicopters. As autumn gave way to winter we collected pinecones, honesty and other dried seed heads, glossy holly leaves and bright red berries. In Transition we kept silkworms in the classroom.

In those far off days when the government was too busy dealing with other matters to meddle with education, my school nurtured a love of books which has remained with me ever since. When I first started school at the age of four I wasn't too keen on learning to read, I had no need to read because I had a ready supply of adults to read to me. We had little red check gingham bags which hung on the backs of our chairs to hold our reading books. The Happy Venture reading scheme was deeply uninspiring, the books were about Dick and Dora, their friends May and Jack and their dog Nip. I suspect those books came out of the ark because as a child growing up in the 1960's I didn't know any children called Dick, Dora, May or Jack, I didn't identify with them and I couldn't care less about what the words meant because it was so boring. Who in their right mind would call a dog Nip, it is asking for trouble! We had better reading books later on, I think those were called Wide Range Readers, finally there was something worth reading and suddenly I could read. We also read poetry in class every week, I enjoyed it and I wanted to be able to read the words in the book (which I think was called Rhyme and Rhythm) so that I could read the poems again and again. The poems were fun, one of my favourites was called When Daddy Fell into The Pond by Alfred Noyes, but best of all was the Spike Milligan poem The Ning Nang Nong. As well as promoting a love of words and a desire to read, these early adventures provided a wonderful foundation on which a lasting love of poetry was built.

The school day always began with prayers in the hall. As we filed into the hall class by class Mrs Mossman played Men of Harlech on the piano. I don’t remember much about Prayers except that we always sang a hymn, my favourite at that time was ‘He who would valiant be’ and my least favourite was ‘God be in my head’. I think we had a Bible reading and a prayer as well but I really don’t remember. At the end of each school day we would line up in our classroom and our teacher would lead us across to the hall where we sat cross legged in the care of the teacher on duty until our mothers came to collect us. Then we when our names were called we had to walk across to the teacher, say ‘Good afternoon Mrs xxxx’ and hold out our hands to show that we were wearing our gloves (white for summer, navy for winter) and hats, before we were allowed to leave.

A couple of times each year we put on our hats and coats (and gloves of course) and walked two by two along the Billing Road to ‘main school’ in Derngate. The ‘toy service’ took place shortly before Christmas, it was a whole school carol service and we all took gifts of toys to donate to charity. To me it was an ordeal, main school was big and frightening and we had to spend weeks learning carols and practicing for the toy service. Sports day took place towards the end of the summer term on in the ‘main school’ grounds alongside Victoria Promenade. It was a very formal affair; our parents were seated in rows in the shade of the copper beech tree and the teachers were all in their best clothes. We had to practice the races for weeks before the big day; we even had to practice walking up to receive the winner’s ribbon and shaking hands. For me practice did not make perfect, I didn’t win any races so I was spared the worry of remembering how to shake hands properly.

I have lots of good memories of Spring Hill but perhaps the most enduring memory is the smell of TCP and the row of pupils with cut knees sitting in the First Form cloakroom waiting to have their knees bathed after falling over in the playground.

Towerfield

At age 9 we left Spring Hill behind and moved to Towerfield in Derngate. The two years that I spent there were among the happiest of my school career. We referred to that part of the school as Towerfield, but it actually consisted of two connected buildings, 66 Derngate (Towerfield) and 68 Derngate. They were wonderful old building with so much for inquisitive young girls to discover. There was a speaking tube and a dumb waiter between Miss Thornton’s classroom (on the ground floor in 68 Derngate) and Mrs Nichol’s room (above). If you entered the building at street level you had to go downstairs to reach the garden. There were cloakrooms downstairs in what were perhaps the old kitchens in 68 Derngate and there was a garden room below 66 Derngate. The gardens, which had retained some of their former charm, included a fish pond and a monkey puzzle tree. Beyond the paved area near the garden room some steps led down to a long narrow lawn where we played in summer. There were still one or two private houses between Towerfield and main school, but a path bordered by an old brick wall led along the right hand side of the Towerfield garden and around the back of the private gardens to the main school grounds. This enabled us to get to the main school without going out onto the street, but when we went to our music lessons at Beckett House on the corner of Victoria Promenade we had to walk along the pavement to get there

I loved 68 Derngate best of all

We first met Mrs Nichol in Towerfield, she had a low, strong voice and a certain style and presence. She taught 'Speech'. We had to write out and learn a poem every fortnight, then in the lesson we took turns to stand up and recite our poem to her and the class while she marked the exercise book. Her marks were not generous, but just occasionally everything went well and she gave an A*. We soon learnt not to get into her bad books. She was firm, but fair and she knew how to get the best out of people. My parents paid for me to have ‘Extra Speech’ lessons with her as well. We had to work hard, but I enjoyed working for Speech and Drama examinations. I perhaps didn't recognise it at the time, but Mrs Nichol played a significant part in my education and I have a lot to thank her for. I am grateful that we were required to learn so much good poetry by heart. I have kept my 'Poems for Pleasure' books from Towerfield days and they are among my most treasured possessions.

Mrs Noikavitch was my teacher for the first year at Towerfield, I liked her. Her room was upstairs in 66 Derngate; from the front window we could look across the road towards the veterinary surgery of Sutton Steel and Holmes (where an office block now stands) and from the back window we could look out over the gardens and the tennis courts, past the Cripps Block to Becket’s Park and beyond. Mrs Lett taught us history and biology, I liked both subjects but she made us copy notes from the board at top speed, you had to write very fast because when she ran out of space the notes would be rubbed off and written over. My worse memory is being made to run from school to the Mounts for swimming lessons, it was all uphill and we had to run through the derelict streets near the Mounts that were awaiting demolition. I was so pleased when later in my school career the pool at the hospital Cripps Centre was used for swimming instead; at least we didn’t have so far to run.

78 Derngate

I did not enjoy music lessons, but the music department was based in Becket House on the corner of Victoria Promenade and I became very fond of that building, it had bunches of grapes in the coving. I wish I had taken more notice of the wonderful buildings that were part of our school, but perhaps I was too young to appreciate them. 78 Derngate (the Charles Rennie McIntosh house) was owned by the school at that time and the downstairs room was used as a classroom. I didn’t have any lessons there, but I walked past it almost daily and I must have been into that classroom at some time or other, but I didn’t give it a second thought.

The Dining Room 78 Derngate was a school room

My second year at Towerfield was spent in Miss Thornton’s class. I missed the warm caring nature of Mrs Noikavitch, but Miss Thornton was interesting in a stiff and starchy sort of way. She sometimes took us out to explore forbidden parts of the garden and she told us about previous pupils that she had taught. I was amazed to find that Caroline Bradley (an international show jumper and one of my heroes at that time) had not only attended Northampton High, she had been taught in our classroom and had sat at one of our desks. Our desks were ancient, double desks made of heavy wood with bench seats and desk lids that opened up so that we could keep our books inside. Each desk had an inkwell and a groove along the top for pens. When we moved from Springhill to Towerfield we no longer wrote in pencil, we had to have an Osmiroid fountain pen. At the start of each term a brand new piece of pink blotting paper was issued to each pupil and we were expected to write neatly in our unlined exercise books, without blots. The inkwells were collected on a big wooden tray each week by the ink monitor and refilled with ink from a large bottle. We had monitors for everything, a door monitor to open and close the door when teachers or visitors came to the door (we had to stand whenever an adult entered the room), a book monitor to hand out and collect exercise books, a milk monitor to distribute our daily bottle of milk, and the most coveted job of all, a bell monitor who had to ring the hand bell which stood on a table in the entrance hall of 66 Derngate, at the end of each lesson.

At Spring Hill I was taken to and from school by car, but when I moved to Towerfield I was expected to travel home by bus. On the days when I went to my parents shop I caught the 6, 6A or 12 bus from George Row to St James. On other days I caught the number 8 bus, (I think from Wood Hill, but I’m not sure) to Landcross Drive. Several of us caught that bus and then walked together along Abington Park Crescent to our homes. Unfortunately there was not safety in numbers, the girls from Abington Vale School would surround us, grab our hats and throw them into the road to get run over. We were too scared to remove our hats, it was a terrible ‘sin’ to be spotted by a teacher in uniform without a hat on, but having our hats damaged made our parents angry because they were costly to replace. When I was a bit older, I caught the number 1 bus home instead because it was safer.