School Reports - Past Pupil's Memories of St Luke's

The Past Pupil Reunions, which now take place annually, have become an exciting and unique part of St Luke’s calendar. Every year, the children and the staff look forward to welcoming former pupils back to their old school and entertaining them with tea, cakes and musical performances.

Having worked with QueenSpark Books on the Millenium Diary Project, we wondered whether they might be interested in gathering our past pupils’ memories to create a book which would help to celebrate our centenary year. QueenSpark Books were keen to be involved and have worked with utter devotion to produce this book. We owe many thanks to all the volunteers who have given up hours and hours of their time in order to make this book possible and in particular to Jackie Blackwell who has co-ordinated this project brilliantly with utter enthusiasm and dedication.

Our gratitude must also go to both Doreen Corbett who was the initial inspiration behind the reunions and Pat Holford for her commitment over many years to both running and developing the reunions. Without them both, this book would not have been possible.

Thank you all,

Ron Guilford
Head

Kay Berny
Deputy Head

May 2003

Pat Holford first joined St Luke’s Junior School in 1959 as a student teacher, earning £2.10 a week. After leaving college she taught in Moulescoomb for a year before returning to St Luke’s. Pat had a particular passion for drama, putting on many plays with Mollie Taylor the music teacher. Pat remained at the school until her retirement in 1999, however she often returns, working as a supply teacher and helping to organise and run the school reunions.

Doreen Corbett was a pupil at St Luke’s School from 1937 to 1944. She experienced first hand the turbulent war years where schooling was often interrupted by air raids and the influx of evacuees. Doreen instigated the very first reunion of wartime pupils in 1994 and has been tireless in her organisation of regular reunion dinners and outings ever since.

Historical Overview

St Luke’s School is a striking building in St Luke’s Terrace, located in the Queen’s Park area of Brighton. It was built in 1903 to the design of prestigious local architect for the Brighton and Preston School Board, Thomas Simpson.

On the morning of 20th July 1903 the impressive school opened its doors for the first time. The pupils arrived from the nearby Finsbury Road School, marched in procession along St Luke’s Terrace with their books and belongings. Kathleen Back, pupil at the school from 1908, recalls her mother talking about the event, where the streets surrounding the school were full of people cheering and welcoming the pupils.

At this time, the junior’s were educated separately; the Girls’ Department was housed on the middle corridor, with Miss Thomas as the Headmistress and the Boys’ Department was located on the top corridor overseen by their Headmaster, Mr Dewdney. They were aged between 7–14 years.

The infant’s classes however, were co-educational and positioned on the ground floor of the school and they had as they do today, their own Head, separate entrance and playground.

During the First World War, the school was closed for a short while to serve as a hospital for Indian soldiers injured in the fighting. Fred Tester, who was at the school from 1912, remembers being sent to Elm Grove School during this time.

In 1928, the Boys Department became St Luke’s Terrace Senior Boys’ Council School for boys aged 11–14 years, with Mr Dewdney remaining as their Headmaster. The Girls’ Department became St Luke’s Terrace Junior Mixed School for pupil’s aged 7–11 years old, presided over by a new Headmistress, Miss Dutton-Briant.

When the junior girls reached eleven years old they then left to attend Elm Grove Senior Girls (unless they passed the Scholarship). The junior boys however, were able to move up to the top corridor at the age of eleven and join St Luke’s Senior Boys, unless they too passed the Scholarship.

In 1956, the Senior Boys left the top corridor of St Luke’s and returned to Finsbury Road School, although they retained the name of St Luke’s Senior Boys. Also at this time, the junior classes from Finsbury Road School joined together with those from St Luke’s and the school became known, as it is today, St Luke’s Junior School.

St Luke’s Junior School Reunions

Several years ago, we wanted to find out the name of the artist who painted the mural dedicated to the boys of St Luke’s who died in the First World War; all we knew was that it was unveiled on 22nd May 1925. Around the same time, by coincidence, I noticed an item in the Argus inviting past pupils of St Luke’s who had attended during the Second World War years, to a reunion organised by Doreen Corbett. I thought this might be a good opportunity to see if anyone knew anything about the mural. Doreen asked her group at their reunion, but nobody could help (we later found out that Lawrence Preston was the artist). Following this, I invited the group to come back and visit the school. They came in July 1996 and were served refreshments and shown around the school by the pupils in my class. The children were delighted to hear the tales they had to tell about their schooldays. This was a great success and Doreen said that she knew more people who would have liked to come back for a visit. In 1997, the second reunion at the school was held and many more people came.

Since then the numbers attending the school reunion have steadily grown and those returning now span before, during and after the war years. At last year’s reunion over 150 people attended and enjoyed sharing their school recollections with both past and present pupils.

So thanks to a set of coincidences involving the mural, Doreen Corbett and the Argus, the reunion’s held at St Luke’s School were born.

Pat Holford
April 2003

About the St Luke’s School First World War Memorial

The mural depicts and remembers the ‘essential services’ undertaken during the Great War. On the right side of the window are the different types of town workers; the defenders of land, sea and air. To the left are the different kinds of Sussex rural workers; the woodsman, the shepherd and the harvester. Images of St George and Britannia flank the window. The names of the 44 Old Boys who fell are inscribed below the mural. The original idea for a memorial came from the Old Boys Association, who together with staff, class masters, boys and parents raised the money to create it. The mural was unveiled to parents, pupils, friends and dignitaries at a ceremony on 22 May 1925. This unique feature continues to preside over the Hall, stimulating the imagination of pupils, both past and present.

How it all started…
an introduction to the wartime reunions

The idea first came to me one morning early in 1994 as I was listening to Radio 2 and hearing about someone organising a reunion of wartime pupils at a school in West Ham. ‘Why don’t I do that?’ I thought, and without further ado I contacted the Argus newspaper to place an advertisement in it to help me contact my class of ’37, which they were happy to do.

The results were unbelievable and beyond all my expectations. The first reply was from Thelma Park, my very first friend at St Luke’s and it seemed that afterwards letters were arriving by every post and the memories of my early school days came flooding back. Needless to say we all recalled vividly life at the school during the war years and coping with the air raids – as frequent as the arithmetic lessons – as they were. It is a lasting testimony to the skill of my teachers at that difficult time that what I learned then set me up for life.

Our group decided to hold our first reunion dinner in Rottingdean on October 29th 1994 – a poignant affair for the twenty-four who attended and an unforgettable evening. This was followed by annual lunches; dinners and even holidays together as our numbers grew. Soon it had come to the notice of the present day St Luke’s School and I was contacted by the teacher of Year 6, Pat Holford, inviting me to bring my old pupils back to the school for an open day.

Consequently, in June 1996 I took my group there for another trip down memory lane, and a walk around the old place – which, as a grade II listed building hadn’t changed at all. One old pupil, Peter Clark, was inspired to produce a to-scale drawing of it, which was presented to the Head and is proudly displayed at the school. The open day was such a success that we have been invited back every year since as the members attending and the popularity has grown – even including old pupils now living abroad.

It is therefore with great pride and personal satisfaction that I look back to how my original idea for a wartime reunion has borne such wonderful fruit and brought such pleasure to so many by the reuniting of old friends and even families. In addition to the annual reunions held at the school, my group continues to meet up and keep in touch through regular events and activities.

I am delighted to have contributed to this book to mark the Centenary on July 20th 2003 commemorating one of the most happy and successful schools in England.

Doreen Corbett
April 2003

Preface

This book is the result of audio interviews together with written and photographic contributions from past pupils, the majority of whom attended the St Luke’s Junior School reunion in 2002. The memories span almost eight decades from 1908 to 1983.

At the reunion we asked past pupils to share their recollections of the school and recorded them onto audio disc. We transcribed, read and re-read all the material and began the process of selecting and compiling extracts into common themes and topics. The material chosen represents a selective range of contributions received and is not intended to be a comprehensive history of St Luke’s School. Many of the reminiscences mirror generic experiences of schooldays and we hope that they will be a springboard for your own school memories, whether spent at St Luke’s or in other schools.

We have tried to retain the individual voices of those we interviewed, by keeping the editing to a minimum. The words you read are those of the past pupils as spoken or written themselves and not by the project team.

Over the past year, the project team has worked voluntarily to produce this book, interviewing, transcribing, editing, compiling and selecting photographs for use. As the project has progressed, we have grown familiar and become attached to both the contributors and the school itself.

QueenSpark Books are very proud to have produced and published this book in collaboration with St Luke’s Junior School to celebrate their Centenary year. We hope you enjoy it.

St Luke’s Oral History Project Team

Margaret Bell, Jackie Blackwell, Zoe Bradford, Sam Carroll, Peter Crowhurst, Sarah Fox, John Knight, Sheena Macdonald, Pamela Platt, Rosie Walker and David Wilson

April 2003

1 Journeys to School

I went to St Luke’s School at the age of four, and I cried to go to school because my cousins they’d gone and I was lonely. I started going to school in 1908. I used to live in 43 Fresh field Street – I was born there. I only had to go round the corner. There were no council houses there in those days; you see the name of the road, ‘Fresh Field’ – my mother remembered when it was just a field! And she remembered when they shut Finsbury Road School. She saw the children walk in a parade with their books under their arms when they came to St Luke’s in 1903. She saw the children march up.

Kathleen Back: Attendance 1908-1915

We all walked to school, course there was no traffic and we used to play in Queen’s Park Road. It’s a nice wide road for playing with tops, you know.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

I lived not very far away in Windmill Street, which is off Queen’s Park Road, so it only took me a few minutes to get to school. I can remember running one day, I was a bit late, and as I was running a dog bit me on the bottom! It didn’t do much but it did actually break the skin. But I was more upset about being late, I think — I was tearing up the road!

Edna Dray: Attendance 1927-1931

I well remember walking to school with my friend John Bower, right from the first year in the Infants in early 1927. I am sure my mum only accompanied me for a short while until I became accustomed to the route. It was quite safe, as there were no cars, just a few horse and carts, hand barrow, the odd steamroller and the trams, which ran down the centre of Queen’s Park Road.

Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927-1933

I used to hear the bell ringing at home and I was still there before it finished. I used scoot round the road. I used to live in Freshfield Street and then we lived in The Rise, so I never did have to travel far!

Fred Trott: Attendance 1929-1932

We used to meet boys on the way, especially when we lived in Whippingham Road. Two or three boys started together, up the side streets and by the time we got to school there might be a dozen of us, all from different classes, but neighbours. You weren’t allowed to come in the school until the whistle blew. There was no coming in in wet weather, you just stood out in the shed.

George Pope: Attendance 1929-1937

I used to live so close I used to hear the late bell, the five-minute bell, which we used to call it, and I’d hare down the road and come puffing in. It was only about a minute and a half away from the school so I was never really late, just last minute, because I did love my school.

Joyce Campbell (nee Farley): Attendance 1933-1938

I lived up on the council estate at Fell Road at the top of Freshfield Road there and I used to walk backwards and forwards to school every day. I remember for a long time, probably well into the Junior School, far older than I would have wanted to be, my mother used to insist on coming with me to school and collecting me!

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

2 Welcome to St Luke’s

Seeing the school and thinking what a big place it was — being on the hill, it was open and I suppose that impressed me and when I knew that I was going there I was quite excited about it!

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

I remember starting school when I was four, when the pupils went back after the August holidays. My mother took me down the hill at the top end of the school – the Infants used to be in the side. My mother took me in and she introduced me to Miss Viness, who said ‘Good morning to you.’ Very prosaic you know and she said, ‘say goodbye to your mother.’ She never said ‘mummy’ or anything like that. And then she said ‘Welcome to St Luke’s.’

Fred Tester: Attendance 1912-1922

I remember the first day – Miss Winkworth was the teacher. I used to live in Islingword Road then and I remember running home the first day and my brother, who was three years younger than me, he was outside playing. He was on his trike and he ran indoors and said ‘Mum, Reg is home again,’ and she took me back!

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

I suppose the most outstanding thing was my first day when my mother took me to the Infants’ gate and pushed me through the gate with, ‘On your way.’ This left her in tears, and of course I was in tears. That sticks in my mind.

Jim Elmes: Attendance 1928-1934

I think it’s an impressive school, it stands out. You walk up and you think, ‘That’s a lovely looking school.’ It seemed such a huge, almost like a castle in effect. I think there’s a lot of character here.

Brian Ravenett: Attendance 1949-1950

My day one at St Luke’s, I remember hanging on to that lamp-post at the corner of the street, which is still there, and screeching – hollering that I wouldn’t go to school! There was no way I was going. I was carried screaming into the classroom, where it seemed hundreds of other children were crying! But I soon calmed down. I was crying because I thought that you were put there and never went home again!

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

My first memories of school – in the afternoon we had to lay down on the floor and pretend to go to sleep – I don’t think anybody ever did go to sleep! It was a sort of compulsory rest period.

John Bower: Attendance 1920s

The first thing I noticed when entering the school was a sandbox. Along through the corridor and into an open space where there was a six- foot square box, about eight inches deep and supported by legs, which raised it about two foot off the ground. Filled with glorious sand; perfect for standing around and pushing my hands into the granules.

Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927-1933

My main memories of the Infants’ class, is the big square sandpit in the centre of the room that was on castors that could be moved. And we used to play in and around that with buckets and spades and this that and the other. And then every afternoon we had to go to sleep — go to bed, on little iron beds.

Fred Farley: Attendance 1928-1935

I came here when I was five and I do remember it was quite an occasion. I was quite happy to be here because I loved my school. I was quite amused by the fact that I could go to bed after my dinner or lunch — an afternoon nap. We had little black beds, and we had a bottle of milk during the morning and then we would play, well it was mostly play in the first term. Miss Winkworth was the Headmistress, as far as I can recall. I remember when I first came into the Junior School, my cousin Beryl, it was her first day and she cried and cried and cried. I was called from my class to take her home.

Joyce Campbell (nee Farley): Attendance 1933-1938

When I started at school at age five, my brother was allowed to come with me at age four because there was only a year and three weeks difference between us. I was shy and always with him. The thing I used to hate in the afternoons, we used to have a little canvas bed, which had to be pulled out and we had to have a sleep or a rest and I used to say ‘It’s not dark yet, I’m not ready for sleeping. I sleep at night’!

Yvonne Banks: Attendance 1936-1940s

The lady who taught us was to my mind very, very old — a little old lady with white hair. Her name was Miss Patching, and I can remember that we had to lie down during the afternoons on little beds, and none of us wanted to because we were all fired up and full of beans.

Brenda Street: Attendance 1939-1946

Throughout my life I’ve reflected on a little incident which happened very, very early on and I met the lady concerned today for the first time since I was at school as an infant — I don’t think I’ll name her. But there was a little girl, I was five, who sat in front of me in class and she was beautiful. And I remember, totally without any request or permission from her, kissing her! And she was so taken aback and offended by this, she told me that her father would come to my house and really tell me off. I think for days, if not weeks afterwards, I lived in terror at home waiting for this father to come and knock on my door and every time the door was knocked, I thought this is it! It’s funny that something like that should stand out in your mind above everything else.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

The day I started I got into trouble for talking in class. I was made to stand in the corner and face the wall. After what seemed a long time, I needed the toilet but I was too scared to ask the formidable Miss Bruce.

The consequence being that I wet myself and had to stay like it until home time. Not a very good start to my school life.

Marilyn Pomeroy (nee Sargent): Attendance 1953-1961

On my first day in the Infants I got to stand in the corner for whistling at the Headmistress, Miss Mason. My parents had taught me to whistle as a way of attracting attention if I got lost, that way my parents could find me. No one told me it was just for this and not as a way of other communication. All I wanted to do was say something to Miss Mason!

Pennie Ingram (nee Woodall): Attendance 1963-1970

3 Monitors & Duties

I used to ring the school bell for starting and finishing school and the bell rope used to hang down in the corner of the stairs. I used to sound it and on the last stroke I used to go down the stairs and shut the door. Anybody still in the Terrace was late, so consequently some people might not have liked me all that much!

Fred Tester: Attendance 1912-1922

At ten to nine in the morning, the bell would start to ring and before nine o’clock you had to form up out there [in the playground] like you was in the army, and march up the stairs and no talking on the stairs, they had monitors on each landing.

Leonard Frost: Attendance 1925-1935

They recovered the bell after so many years, they didn’t know it was there. They bought it down from the bell tower. Our class painted it with gold paint and did it all up and we wrote a piece about the bell. We used to come in the entrance by Mrs Joseph’s office and it used to be sitting on a table there. It sat there for years. I wonder where it is now?

Neil Rogers: Attendance 1974-1978

When you were in the top class, there was two of us detailed to stand at the entrance to the main boys’ entrance, as the boots came by, you had to see if the shoes were clean. No such thing as trainers or plimsolls. And you pulled ’em out if their shoes was dirty and you wrote their name in the book. So when you think about it, how smart we must have looked. Whatever happened to the book, I don’t know — I think it was more a bit of a bluff!

George Pope: Attendance 1929-1937

We used to have monitors on the stairs to make sure you’d cleaned your shoes. If you’d been kicking about in the playground, they used to say ‘You’ve obviously cleaned your shoes, but watch it another time.’ You were lucky to have shoes in those days.

Bert Tully: Attendance 1930-1939

We used to assemble in the playground before school and march up the stairs. And there used to be monitors on the stairs an’ if your shoes were dirty, they would pull you out — ready for punishment.

Roy Long: Attendance 1932-1935

The day was highly organised. Right the way through to a practice which apparently still persists to this day; the progress up and down the stairs, monitored on each landing. We were always quite horrid to whichever ‘teacher’s pet’ had been chosen to stand on the landing. They monitored if you were of good behaviour i.e. you didn’t muck around, you didn’t shout and you weren’t rude to the girls. And if you were, there were various shades of punishment.

Keith Bergin: Attendance 1936-1940

One of the jobs was to stand on the stairway and make sure that children only went up the stairs one at a time an’ if someone went up two at a time, we had to call them over and tell them why they should be careful on the stairs! If someone was really naughty you had to report it, we had a special notebook to write it down in and then they’d just be sent to the teacher to be told off.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

The third of a pint of milk started in about ’32–’33 maybe, and we used to pay a ha’penny for it, I believe, it wasn’t free, a ha’penny… I’ve always loved milk!

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

The school smelled of carbolic, it did and lots. The only thing you used to see in the passage was the milk crates. Once you had your milk in the morning, those who could afford these ha’penny bottles of milk, then the milk monitor used to take the crates down below and by the gate.

Edward Humphrey: Attendance 1930-1939

EH: I was a monitor who stood on the landing and I got bored of that and then old Parker made me the milk monitor. And we used to see old Hoppy, you know the…
RF: The milkman.
RF: And he had to take it to the classrooms, and the milk monitor had to take it into the
classrooms. From what he pinched and what went into the classrooms, he got taken off the job.
EH: Pilfering the milk!

Edward Humphrey: Attendance 1930-1939 & Raymond Frost: Attendance 1929-1939

In them days I was like I am now, skinny and thin, an’ we used to have school milk – free – in the playtime. An’ I used to sit in class an’ drink it.

Roy Long: Attendance 1932-1935

At one period I was the milk monitor and I think everybody got a third of a pint. I used to deliver these round the classrooms and very often they would be put on the radiators, in the winter this is, so they’d get warm milk. It must have tasted terrible!

Stanley Ford: Attendance 1939-1941

I’ll never forget the smell of dried milk on a cloth. Never, ever, ever will I forget that!

Gwen Cole: Attendance 1942-1949

JC: I can remember the dreadful quarter bottles of milk that used to stand outside with the cream sour on the top and they used to make me drink it.
EC: I liked it, you see, that’s different about that. I used to look forward to the milk. We are all different.

Julie Cherriman: Attendance 1946-1948 & Elizabeth Corbett (nee Vickery): Attendance 1944-1947

BR: We all had school milk, yes, and they used to make the tops – they used to be foil – and they used to put them on a string and swing them round…
DB: No, they were cardboard ones because we used to get some raffia and you’d go all around with that and you’d put them together to make table-mats. We were very inventive!

Brian Ravenett: Attendance 1949-50 & Doreen Broomfield: Attendance 1943-50

We used to have a third of a pint of milk and the baker — it used to be a local baker — used to bring the big penny currant buns with that lovely sort of glazed finish and they were one old penny. I really used to look forward to my milk and bun and if I was really greedy I used to have two!

Jackie Eason: Attendance 1950s

One of the most vivid memories was the fact that at break time everyone used to rush downstairs to buy a penny bun… They were obviously delivered from some local bakery in very large, but not terribly deep wooden trays. They were all stuck together. They had to be pulled apart but the wonderful glaze on top of the bun! Most children perhaps, wanted one — bought one, sometimes we were quite fortunate as we would have two or three pennies on us so we bought two or three!

Brian Hills: Attendance 1953-1960

I remember the biscuits and it was, I think, three for a penny if it was Rich Tea and Lincoln, but if it was Royal Scot you only got two for a penny ’cause they were more expensive and they were posher!

Jeanette Eason: Attendance 1960s

They’d give you various jobs — you were given them…no choice. There was no volunteer to step forward! It was just, ‘this week you will be the milk monitor’ and that would be the big job. You would be the one in charge to make sure everyone had their milk with a straw in it — a very responsible job and you had to collect them afterwards.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

One of the things that I do remember, a smell from the school, whenever I smell it now it brings me back to the school, and that was warmed milk. We all had bottles of milk and I can remember dragging the little crate along with a bit of string and delivering all the bottles to the kids. Of course it was never cold and you’d drink it and there was a smell about it and the milk bottle tops had a little bit of congealed milk on. So whenever I smell that it takes me back. It’s not off, it’s just warm and it smells of school.

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-1971

You became an ink monitor to fill up the inkwells. It was kept in a can and you’d pour it into the inkwell.

Kathleen Back: Attendance 1908-1915

One of the prefects had to go round filling up the inkwells. I was a prefect — we had to embroider our badge in our team colour on a little bit of navy blue, which we pinned on our drill tunic next to the badge and it just said ‘prefect’… we just had to keep everybody in order!

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

I was made a class monitor by the teacher in the last term, and I recall cleaning the blackboards for her and getting out the books and the pencils. And filling up the inkwells, because you are all sitting at tip-up desks and either side were inkwells stuck in the desks. I used to go round with a bottle and fill them up. A cupboard was in front of the teacher’s desk, and she asked me to get out six pairs of scissors. I plonked in front of her twelve pairs. She said, ‘I only asked for six pairs,’ but I said, ‘Two make a pair, Miss!’

Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927-1933

I had long hair and it wasn’t supposed to be and I remember my hair got put in an inkpot! I was a monitor, we’d check the wash basins and things and we had to watch that people weren’t mucking about in school and out in the playground. We handed out things in school — books, whatever.

Edna Dray: Attendance 1927-1931

The blackboard rubber gave out huge puffs of white chalk and a person would be chosen to wipe the blackboard. It was quite fun because if you were naughty, you actually made an awful lot of chalky mess or powder by banging it.

Pamela Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s

I was always washing up monitor and I had to wash all the teachers’ cups up in the little room just off the classroom with another girl and we used to have a whale of a time washing up.

Julie Cherriman: Attendance 1946-1948

I remember being Miss Dutton-Briant’s ‘monitor’ which meant that I had to hurry up to her room every time a bell went in my classroom and ‘do her bidding’ for example, taking a message round to every class in the Junior School! Goodness knows what I missed of my lessons!

Pamela Fearnhead (nee Bergin): Attendance 1935-1935

The ink was from a big jar with a spout on the top and someone obviously had the responsibility, I suppose we must have taken it in turns, to just go round and top them up periodically during the day.

Brian Hills: Attendance 1953-1960

I was Head Boy in my last year – I’ve still got the badge somewhere! I know I was one of the top pupils and it tended to be awarded that way and I was actually quite shy and that helped quite a bit. I think I did a reasonably good job!

Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962

I was the ‘tea monitor’, and that would be going into the school staff room and collecting money from the teachers for their tea. You’d be sent in with this tin rattling and you’d have to give the right change, which was all very responsible for a kiddie. You had to be persistent otherwise you weren’t carrying out your monitor job very well. I think on a couple of occasions teachers wrote IOU’s and had to put those in the tin but they weren’t allowed any more tea if they didn’t pay up!

We did have the Prefect system. You got a Prefect badge and then it was your duty to keep your eye on the school — keep the children under control. You used to be sent to the Infants to help the teacher in that class — help the little ones, be sort of helpful.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

GB: Me and Tracy in Mr Dunkley’s class, we were allowed to go down and polish the cups and silver down there [in the entrance hall] and open the mail and things like that which we used to enjoy doing ‘cos we could get out of a couple of classes, which we thought was pretty good then!
TM: I had the Silvo and you were posh — posh girl with the Duraglit, which your mum let you bring from home!

Gail Buckle and Tracy Martin: Attendance 1970s

4 School Uniform

In summer we had check blouses in the colour of our house, either orange and white, blue and white, green and white and in the winter, navy blue jumpers, with just two or three rows of the house colour on the collar and on the cuff. I think the boys had caps, but I don’t think they had uniforms.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

I had a school cap, that’s all, just a cap. Maybe I’d have worn a jersey and in the winter, an overcoat… we always wore shorts. I never went into long trousers until I left school, I didn’t want to go into long trousers, I enjoyed shorts – I wanted to wear shorts. I always had shoes, I think some wore boots but I always wore shoes.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

School uniforms wasn’t heard of and you couldn’t afford them, but there was a cap and the Juniors’ was blue with an orange brief, and the Senior Boys’ was a cap and it was navy blue with the red badge ‘St Luke’s Terrace School’. When we was in the Juniors my mum made me a scarf, orange and blue, about three yards long. I got it on down here and they nearly strangled me with it. Swung me round in circles ’cause it was too bloody long!

Leonard Frost: Attendance 1925-1935

In the Juniors we had to wear navy blue tunics and white blouses and we wore Panama hats in the summer and velour hats in the winter and then there was a badge. You could have a blazer with a badge but that was optional obviously because lots couldn’t afford them…but the hats, most of us had these hats…

Edna Dray: Attendance 1927-1931

My portrait had been taken by a visiting photographer. I was wearing a closely knitted grey jersey, which had long sleeves and a collar. The tie around my neck would have been knotted by Mum as I would’ve undoubtedly made a mess of it. Most, if not all the boys, wore the school tie, which was also closely knitted. It was straight with no points or shape and two inches wide throughout its two-foot
length. There were no coloured photographs at that time, but the tie had blue and yellow stripes, which were the school’s colours.

Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927-1933

I would wear throughout school, starting in the Infants, short trousers, socks and shoes, right the way through into the Seniors! I think the first year in the Seniors we were still wearing grey short trousers, but then it was a big step forward to go into long trousers. One of my surviving memories of those days in the Senior School was that I came from a dysfunctional family and we had a lot of problems financially. I had an uncle, who had been born with one leg shorter than the other and he used to wear one shoe that was made up. I had big feet so as I got older I used to get my uncle John’s cast-off shoes and I remember the embarrassment of coming to school wearing one shoe that was made up higher than the other! It’s not tragic at all really because I can look back on it, laugh at it, talk about it and think how lucky I am now.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

Mothers made a lot of stuff for school in those days. We didn’t have a school uniform as such. But PE kit consisted of a pair of plimsolls and a vest top and we used to come to school with those in a drawstring bag, which Mum always used to make, and it had your name on it. They were always getting lost those things.

John Washington: Attendance 1949-1955

I think it was compulsory to wear a uniform – I think it was grey shorts, a blazer and probably a white or grey shirt and a tie, a blue and yellow tie. I think there was a cap with a badge but I’m not sure we wore it all the time.

Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962

We liked our uniform – it was a great leveller, it didn’t matter if you were from a poor background or relatively middle class, and certainly at that period of time, in the post-war period a lot of people didn’t have a lot money to throw around. You had your school uniform and you had your badge and you made sure everything was smart. You belonged. It was a sense of belonging.

Jeanette Eason: Attendance 1960s

The blazer was blue and it had a yellow braid all the way round it. I think I’m right in saying that! The badge was much the same with two blue dolphins on it and three crests above it. And the tie was just, the stripy tie. I did actually have the cap as well which was rather like a Cub Scout cap but instead of being green it was blue. It had the gold braiding down the side and on the badge. I used to have the whole uniform, the full Monty!

Chris Eager: Attendance 1960-1964

We used to always have prayers in assembly to start the day in Junior School.

Kathleen Back: Attendance 1908-1915

I think it was September of 1933 when we started back to school. The decorators and renovators had been in the school. We went into assembly this morning and Miss Dutton-Briant walked in, switched on the lights, looked up at the lights — ‘cos we had had chandeliers with multiple bulbs — and she looked up at these lights and the beautiful chandeliers were gone and instead of which there were hanging lights with ordinary opaque bowls. ‘What have they done to my lights!’ she said and I always, always remember her face and looking up as displeased as blazes because they’d changed these lights.

Fred Farley: Attendance 1928-1935

The Headmistress when I was here was called Miss Dutton-Briant and you had assembly every day and you had to have a handkerchief, and woe betide you if you’ d forgotten your handkerchief or lost it. Like I used to when it was summertime ’cause little girls don’t have pockets. And I was so scared. I was very shy when I was young and if you didn’t have a handkerchief she’ d make you walk out to her at the end of the Hall and she’d give you a little tiny square of muslin to blow your nose and everybody had to blow their nose… and breathe deeply. You all had to blow your nose together!

Yvonne Banks: Attendance 1936-1940s

We’d go into the Hall at assembly, and I happened to be captain of the Raleigh house. There was Nelson, Rodney and Drake, the name of the houses, and my dear friend David Moss was head of one of these houses, and Mills [the Headmaster] got up onto a little platform, which we used for PE and then started talking about manners. The next moment he coughed but his hand was still by his side — David Moss and myself looked at one another horrified.

Brian Bergin: Attendance 1937-1948

We used to have assemblies in the morning, and, “He, who would valiant be…” would be sung and other hymns. And if you were around Queen’s Park Rise about quarter past nine and heard all the lads — from twelve up to fifteen — some were big strapping lads — and they would sing out and the whole road sounded brilliant.

Roy Page: Attendance 1943-1951

The assemblies, you might think that was routine, but our assemblies were special occasions when it was almost like a military parade, when one came into the Hall in a very dignified and a very disciplined manner, you know, in silence and the Head would address you. I think they were conducted almost on a daily basis. One took a lot of pride in them, like singing the national anthem.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

The main bit of the assembly that I can remember was a massive, plastic birthday cake, that was wheeled in virtually every day ‘cos it was always somebody’s birthday. The child would look at this wonderful plastic birthday cake and then everyone would sing ‘Happy Birthday’. We never got a bit of cake, as it was just a big plastic! But it never happened for me ‘cos my birthday was always in the Easter holidays. That was one of the things, feeling really disappointed no one ever sang that to me.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961_1967

I remember at assemblies, where if it was your birthday you got given a sweet, an’ I was always gutted ‘cos my birthday was in half-term every year!

Tracy Martin: Attendance 1970s

I was allowed to do ‘what you did over the last year’ kind of thing, in the assembly on Monday morning – like an extended ‘show and tell’.. I’d been to New Zealand and I said, ‘This is my lovely grass skirt that some lovely Maoris gave to me,’ and Ben sticks his hand up, and I was thinking that’s a bit strange ’cause Ben being a mate of mine I’d told him everything about it. And he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, let’s see if you can do the huka!’ And so everyone’s like ‘Yeah, do the huka,’ and I was like, ‘No, I can’t do it,’ – ‘You can do it, your dad told me,’ – so that carried on – and so then I ended up kind of ‘bullied’ into it in front of the school. As a kind of a revenge tactic I offered to Miss Holford that I would get a group of my mates together and teach it to ’em and we would do it in assembly in two weeks’ time. It was good because all the girls in our class made us grass skirts, which isn’t normally a recognised practice of trying to befriend women, but for those two weeks, we were really popular and so that kind of worked out well in the end! We did it in the end and Ben had to do it as well, which made it even more sweet I think!

Joe Tunmer: Attendance 1981-1989

6 Lessons

I used to love poetry. Mr Dewdney [the Head] he set up a poetry competition one day. And I went in for it and I remember the little poem I wrote now — it’s only a tiny thing. It’s a little remembrance of where people have been in St Luke’s and were killed during the First World War:

We have had many boys in our school
They were brave lads hearty and true
They went out to fight in the battle
To gain liberty for me and for you
These lads went out to France to fight
When they were very young
To help the oppressed and stand up for the right
And that’s how the war was done
And after the Great War was over
It was found that millions were dead
And books about them were written
That could be bought and read

And I’m very proud to say I won First Prize.
The prize was ten marks to my team’s credit.

Fred Tester: Attendance 1912—1922

The St Luke’s School First World War Mural was created as a memorial to the 44 Old Boys of St Luke’s Terrace who gave their lives during the Great War 1914-1918. The mural, created by artist Lawrence Preston and unveiled in May 1925, was designed and painted using the methods and styles of the great Italian artists of the 13th and 14th century and covers the entire end wall of the school Hall.

There was 36 in each class. The desks opened up and we had stools, usually two people at each desk and about eight in a row. The teacher’s desk was on a little dais in the front and there was a cupboard at the side, where our books were kept, and some we put in our own desk. There was an inkwell on each desk. I used to love mental arithmetic and I also liked writing essays.

When we were about 12 or 13 we went to cookery classes at St Mark’s School in Arundel Road. We had to walk there — no school buses. In the morning we’d cook something for our lunch and the afternoon it was housewifery! We had to learn how to clean and do all the things you’d normally do in a house — so we were there all day once a week. That was only for the girls.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920—1928

First morning Peter Hawes and myself sat ourselves at a desk in the back row of the class. Mr Parker called the roll and then said ‘All those wearing glasses, come forward and occupy the front row.’ I wore glasses and was told to move to the front row. As I moved, Peter Hawes got up and moved with me, which prompted Mr Parker to say, ‘Where are you going? You don’t wear glasses.’
Peter Hawes replied, ‘I always sit with Ashton Clarke.’
Mr Parker’s harsh remark was ‘stay where you are — I will decide where you sit.’
On the Monday morning of the second week in Mr Parker’s class, Mr Parker said ‘stand up all those who played in the football team on Saturday.’
Three of us stood up — Peter Hawes, myself and one other. Mr Parker then spoke to me and said ‘I suppose you’re standing up because Peter Hawes is standing up.’ I replied, ‘No Sir, I played with Peter Hawes in the under thirteen football team, I was the goalkeeper!’
He apologised and said he didn’t recognise me without my glasses on!

Ashton Clarke: Attendance 1924—1934

When I tell you 52 pupils [in a class], teachers would be horrified today. The bright ones sat in the front and the dimmer you were the further back, so if you were bright you were helped a lot. If not you just got on as best you could.

Dorothy Jupp: Attendance 1928—1932

To tell you the truth, I wasn’t brilliant at maths. The thing that used to worry me most of all was speed and accuracy, it was called, mental arithmetic, and I’d got not much of either! It was immediately after assembly on a Friday morning. I could never concentrate on the assembly because I was thinking ‘ohhh maths’. When we got into the class the books were put on the table and the teacher used to say ‘open the books’ at a certain page ‘and do as many as you can’. We had to swap with the person next door and they used to mark them and my scores were always atrocious and that didn’t help!

Fred Trott: Attendance 1929—1932

I was very good at composition; I got sixty out of sixty for composition. Mr Pollard was the teacher an’ he was marking the exam results of the competition – the annual one – and he said, ‘Is your name Long?’ I said ‘Yes sir,’ an’ he threw me half a crown, which is a lot of money in them days. Sixty out of sixty!

Roy Long: Attendance 1932-1935

When I was in the Juniors, science and geography were my favourite subjects – I hated history, absolutely hated it, all those dates and fighting and wars and things I didn’t like. I thoroughly enjoyed my science and PE. Another thing, we would go for walks in the country, with the nature studies classes and would continue that after school and collect various leaves and seeds – we used to go over the Downs with no worries at all.

Joyce Campbell (nee Farley): Attendance 1933-1938

We did a lot of drawing in those days and I drew a car, it was a Morris. We finished them off at home, if I remember, and my father gave me some silver paint and I painted it silver. It was quite a big picture, about two-foot long and a foot high. And the teacher went crazy, thought it was great and hung it in the classroom. It was still hanging in there when I left.

Gerald Spicer: Attendance 1934-1935

I remember doing a nature lesson and the teacher putting little drawings up and telling us the name of all the plants, very simple things, actually, now looking back. I can remember thinking, ‘I’d like to be a teacher, but, I’ll never know as much as she knows,’ because, somehow in my mind I thought she held it all in her head and I thought ‘How could she possibly know all those things?’ And yet I ended up as a teacher!

Enid Bywater-Lees (nee Doherty): Attendance 1938-1944

When I look back now, I wonder how we used to get so much in. I can remember we always had prayers, I can’t remember whether it was in the Hall or not, but we always started the day off with prayers. And definitely regimented lessons, we didn’t wander around the school. We stayed in the same room with the same teacher, even for gym and for singing and for everything, the teacher would take us for everything. Sometimes they would take us in to the Hall for something but then back again.

Doreen Corbett: Attendance 1937-1944

We had several lessons that I was quite interested in; art was one, English and maths. I used to quite enjoy maths, because maths was an exact science, whereas to me English wasn’t an exact science — you could move it about a bit! But there was only one answer to a maths question, it was right or it was wrong. We used to memorise the tables, which I think is extremely good because even today I can still remember — you know six times four: 54 suddenly comes into your head!

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

The first piece of work I did, which I’ve got somewhere at home, was the Union flag. A teacher had put a maroon strip across for the cross and I had filled it in, with my great artistic ability — which is nil — and my father wrote on the back ‘Brian’s first piece of work from school, four and a half years of age, 1937’.

Brian Bergin: Attended 1937-1948

We had a little bit of music here with Miss Atherfold. She had a percussion band and I can remember now that the notes used to be in different colours, and the colours used to relate to the instruments — it was a good system! We always used to play the same thing with the only thing missing being the violin going ‘plong’! It was very, very good — we had this wind up gramophone with the part you couldn’t actually play, the violin part …everybody kept quiet, listened to the violin then we all went back to the bang crash …with her pointing to the notes! It was great!

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

Mr Godfree would write up ten words, which were quite difficult, and if at the end of the lesson you didn’t know the spelling of those ten, if you didn’t get eight or more, you were called out in front of the class and given the sjambok and that really hurt — but you learnt.

Stanley Ford: Attendance 1939-1941

We used to have to use every little scrap of a paper. From edge to edge, you didn’t leave margins and you didn’t just use one side of a paper, you used both sides — tightly packed in all the words and it was this awful yellowy, coarse sort of paper, you couldn’t get nice writing paper, it was very rough. There was no paint on the pencils, they were just plain wood. You had to use them right down to the very tiniest bit and then there was some metal holders that you could fit onto the end of the pencil so you got the absolute maximum out of the pencil.

Jean Stedman: Attendance 1940-1944

I’ve actually taken a class in this school! I was on the beach one Sunday putting a trawl on the ground rope and a shadow appeared over me and a voice said ‘I didn’t know you could do things like that, Rolfe.’ It was Mr Webb, my teacher, and he said ‘Explain to me what you’ve done.’ So I explained, and off he went. About a week later I was in having an English class with Mr Robotham and a boy came in and said, ‘John Rolfe go and see Mr Webb.’ As I walked in Mr Webb said, ‘There’s a piece of chalk and forty children there, tell them all about fishing!’ For about two minutes I was absolutely terrified, but by the end of the lesson, I had all sorts of things drawn on there. And when the bell rang for the end of the class he said, ‘Well, you kept them quieter than I could for half an hour!

John Rolfe: Attendance 1940—1950

We used to go in the big Hall with Mr Sharman for music and I know that three of us tried to nip out, because it used to be the last lesson of the day We decided to nip away ’cause Mr Sharman was pretty soft really and we was just about to go out the gate and Mr Sharman saw us and made us go back! So then we got into trouble there. When we got back we wiggled in and they’d stopped singing and Sharman said, ‘start off Pattenden,’ and luckily the lads whispered what we was singing — but with my voice I don’t know how I did it!

Ernie Pattenden: Attendance 1941—1944

When we had to answer questions in class for various subjects, it could have been tables or spellings and if you got one wrong you stood up. Then if you got another one wrong, you stood up on the chair, and the next one wrong you put one hand on your head and eventually you had both hands on your head, if you got that far!

Gwen Cole: Attendance 1942-1949

I look back and I think, yes we were lucky that we passed our 11 plus. I can’t remember how long it took — a whole day — but if you missed out on that it could change the course of your life.

Doreen Broomfield: Attendance 1943-50

One of the lessons was to draw a map from your house to the school. The lads, when they learned what the subject was, started to laugh because they knew I was living right opposite the school. I sat there — I’d made little lines on the sheet of paper — I just sat there the whole lesson. Then I got called out and [the teacher] said to me ‘What’s this here?’ I said, ‘That’s my way to the school.’ ‘What are these bits?’ he asked. ‘Well, that’s the kerb.’ Then he said, ‘Right, now go back to your seat and through playtime,’ he thought of somewhere miles away on the other side of Brighton, ‘do the map from there to the school.’

Roy Page: Attendance 1943-1951

When I was in the Senior School we had a very good art teacher called Mr Davies and the topic that we were following then in art was underwater scenes with King Neptune and mermaids and boxes of treasure and fish swimming around. I remember it was probably the best painting I ever did and I got high marks for it. I felt very proud about that. I don’t think I ever bettered it since or before!

I think English was probably my favourite subject and poetry because it was something that I did reasonably well at. I don’t think I excelled very well or very much at school as a youngster in the broader subjects, but poetry was something that stands out in my mind…

Tony Peek: Attendance 1945-1955

I think probably we were the first year to have student teachers, and they came in with all these wonderful new ideas. We had to make paper mache puppets and we had to give a puppet show. Up to then all we ever did really had been painting pictures, and for this we had percussion with instruments that we had to play and it was like magic to me.

Julie Cherriman: Attendance 1946-1948

I think I was about seven, it was in a classroom that overlooks the playground, I did this drawing of a donkey with somebody sitting on its back holding a carrot over it – and they thought this was wonderful. I couldn’t believe it and they sent me to art college and I think I went for one Saturday morning and all my friends were going to Saturday morning pictures so I thought ‘I’m not going to go to school Saturdays as well!’ So I just went once and that was it. I thought ‘Fancy going to school six days a week!’

Ray Bradford: Attendance 1952-1959

I do remember doing painting and having little Shipham’s paste pots full of water. We used to sit doing a painting lesson and every so often the water would get cloudy and we’d have to change it. I’d get so fed up with the painting I used to change it often – about ten times a lesson!

Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962

I can remember as a child doing lessons where you chose what you wanted to do and there’d be lots of little sorts of folders on the wall and they’d have different exercises in them. You came in and if you wanted to do one of those exercises you did. But it didn’t matter which one you did. So if you fancied doing a maths exercise — that’s what you did. If you wanted to do a bit of drawing, you went and found a card that had drawing. That seemed to be very progressive and a pretty good way of teaching. Not everything about what happened here worked because I was here during the period when they tried to get people to spell as it sounded and it absolutely knackered me for spelling. I’ve never been able to spell since. It hasn’t stopped me in any way but various people of my age seem to struggle with spelling. I think it was called ‘phonetic spelling’ and it didn’t really work, as I understand it.

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-1971

We used to go out on topics and we’d go down the seafront. We very often did a topic each year and I remember doing a seaside one, and we did one on St Nicholas’s Church where we had to go and find out all the history of the people that were buried there. I used to like anything where we went out and about.

Heather Sallis: Attendance 1966-1971

There used to be a music room in a portacabin. Down in one of the playgrounds – the main Junior playground. And I used to really look forward to music classes ‘cos our music teacher Mrs Taylor was quite a character. And we used to share a glockenspiel – you know – one stick each. I can remember playing so hard once that the soft round bit on the top of my stick flew off and hit the kid in front!

Mr Guilford had a very unique method of teaching. He set us tasks on sheets and you could go away with them. And at any one time in the classroom somebody would be doing maths, somebody would be doing English, somebody doing art, somebody be doing history. It was really very challenging. I remember being very pushed in that year mostly because he was setting me so many maths sheets! We also did a lot of drama. I can remember Mr Guilford reading Huckleberry Finn to us. He’d read a chapter and then we would all have to go away in little groups and figure out how we were gonna act out that scene. Then we’d come back in and each group in turn would act it out. I think it might have been Mrs Ward’s class, we had Alpha, Beta, Gamma’ streams. That sounds old-fashioned – streaming now, I don’t know if they still have it. You had to work through, say your maths books, and if you were Gamma you’d get onto page 10, if you were Beta you’d successfully completed page 16, and if you were Alpha, well you were probably way up…

Daniel Hill: Attendance 1977—1984

7 Teachers

I can remember Miss Patching, she was a little thing, tiny, tiny little thing and she wore little black shoes done up with a button. She looked very old to me but I suppose she would have been quite young.

Kathleen Back: Attendance 1908-1915

Mr Galley used to come in a tweed jacket and sometimes short sort of leggings like jodhpurs…He was rather brash in his manners and his word was law! He used to bring his dog to school and the dog used to sit underneath his desk. He’d often look up and say, ‘You’re eating!’ ‘Yes sir …’ ‘What are you eating?’ ‘sweets sir.’ ‘Bring them out here…’ You never saw them anymore — he was feeding them under the table to his dog! Mr Godfree! What a fellow! He was a fine man — very, very strict in a nice sort of way. Mr Kennard! I liked Kennard. Kennard was a fine man. He was a prisoner of war during the First World War and we used to like history with him… He used to tell us stories of when he was a prisoner blended in with the historical factor.

Fred Tester: Attendance 1912-1922

Mr Raisbeck was the Headmaster and Mr Pollard he was another nice gentleman — and they all lived locally. Mr Godfree used to live in Queen’s Park Road, Mr Pollard lived in Freshfield Road, he used to have the boys round to his house of an evening sometimes… yeah, they were very good, very good.

Mr Parker, he used to think he was a South American goucho — he used to flick his whiskers or something or other. Mr Godfree used to come up behind you and hit you on the head with his knuckle or he used to throw a lump of chalk at you…

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

There was Miss Dutton-Briant, she was quite a biggish lady, she was the sister of the Mayor of Brighton and when she came here, she didn’t exactly look down on us, but she wanted to improve everything. She got us into uniform and she even designed a hat for us. She made every pupil feel proud to go to this school, which gave us all a lift… and made us all work a little bit harder to come up to her ideals, yes. She was very fair and you could always talk to her.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

The Headteacher, Miss Dutton-Briant, had a car. All these streets around here, there were no cars, we didn’t have cars, but they were becoming popular with the professional classes. And the only car that there was, was Miss Dutton-Briant’s, which was a Morris Oxford two-seater, and that stood outside the gate by The Causeway. She was the only one in all the time that I was here had a car. Miss Dutton-Briant was a monumental woman, who carried all before her. She had a strident voice that used to echo across the playground. Not only the pupils but the staff were in mortal dread of her. She ruled, or gave the impression that she ruled, with a rod of iron. So my memories of this school are not entirely happy.

John Bower: Attendance 1927-1933

Miss Dutton-Briant was the Headteacher and she was a little well, bossy really and she used to stand on a little low stool and she was really cocksure. Oh, we were dead scared of her.

Mr Eade was my teacher and he was really, really nice and he was so understanding and if you didn’t know anything you could go and ask him, he never got upset about anything.

Edna Dray: Attendance 1927-1931

The Headmistress, Miss Dutton-Briant, I really believed frightened everybody. One of the punishments then if you were really loud was to be stood outside the door and she used to wear a gown and Louis heels on her shoes and she would walk down the passage with her gown billowing, and just one look was sufficient!

Dorothy Jupp: Attendance 1928-1932

Miss Kathleen Dutton-Briant was the Headmistress, she was always reckoned to be a bit of an ogre but, actually, she was very good and in spite of the fact that she was supposed to be an ogre she wasn’t. She had a heart of absolute gold. When I did the Eleven Plus scholarship and left St Luke’s she gave me a green fountain pen that she used as a keepsake and I’ve still got that fountain pen and that was in 1935!

Miss Atherfold — I absolutely adored, she was really my favourite teacher… all the way through.

Fred Farley: Attendance 1928-1935

Mr Godfree, who sometimes came to school in his military uniform, once asked me where I lived. I said Firle Road and from then on I became his almost daily courier of letters to his girlfriend who lived at Whitehawk. I suspect the relationship was illicit as the woman I delivered the letters to was married! The favour of delivering the letters did not spare me the wrath of the sjambok if I failed to obtain ten correct words in his weekly test.

Gordon Mills: Attendance 1932-1942

Mr Tamkin, that really is the most vivid memory of this school! He was, he wasn’t Headmaster, was he? No, he was the dreaded Mr Tamkin, yes, but otherwise it was lovely. It was a lovely school, a happy school.

Eileen Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s

Mr Tamkin was tall and thin with frizzled dark grey hair and was very quiet but very strict.

June Marshall (nee Pierce): Attendance 1936-1942

Mr Tamkin appeared on one or two occasions — probably before he was discouraged — with a rifle. God knows whether it worked or not, but he was a member of the LDV which had become the Home Guard, and so we were all terribly impressed with the contribution that old Tamkin was making.

Keith Bergin: Attendance 1936-1940

When I arrived at the [Senior Boys] school, at the age of 11, the Headmaster was a Mr Pollard— he was a very, very excellent Head — he was strict on discipline but he was air and looked into things, and boys only got strapped if they really deserved it.

Unfortunately, he retired, and another man by the name of Mills came along. When he was in his office, if you went in there, particularly in the afternoon, it would be filled with smoke, and he’d ask you, we don’t know why, who won the race at 2.30! We could not believe that this man was a Headmaster, and sadly he was a bully, and if any child was sent out of the classroom for even a relatively minor thing, he would take him along and strap him.

Brian Bergin: Attended 1937-1948

They were very strict in ramming lessons into us. I remember Harry Bradford, he was the one who took English. There was Mr Sharman and, of course, Mr Mills. Mr Mills was the Headmaster, he used to wear a gown at times, a frightening figure to us, a very strict man, very rarely smiled, in fact I don’t remember him ever smiling, and he expected discipline.

Basil Mansfield: Attendance 1940s

Miss Baujard, this French teacher, was a fascinating individual and her methods always held your attention and if we were particularly good, she would tell us a story, which held us all spellbound. We all behaved very well, sitting upright with our hands folded, listening intently because we enjoyed her stories so much.

Brian Bergin: Attended 1937-1948

In the Juniors, my most favourite teacher of all was Miss Baujard. Everybody loved Miss Baujard… she was really lovely. She used to tell us stories, lovely.

Bob Pullen: Attendance 1938-1949

Miss Baujard was French and very nice; she was small with very rosy cheeks and gold-rimmed glasses.

June Marshall (nee Pierce): Attendance 1936-1942

The teachers were lovely — my last teacher here was Miss Baldwin, and if we wrote a good composition she would choose one to read out and the winner always had a penny! And you know if you gave a child a penny now it wouldn’t buy anything but you could buy a lot for a penny then. And Miss Baujard, she used to tell us the most wonderful stories — I don’t know whether she got them from books or whether she made them up… she was lovely.

Brenda Street: Attended 1939-1946

We had Miss Baujard who was a very popular teacher. I can remember she used to walk up to school up Freshfield Road, pushing her bike surrounded by young children just like bees around a honey pot! She was a very good teacher who worked hard and if we were good all day, at the end of the day she would always come and sit on the front desk, face the class and tell us a story and we all used to love those stories, so we all used to work hard and be good so we could have the story at the end of the day. We had Miss Baujard for two years, and Mr Tamkin for two years.

Barbara Walker: Attendance 1940-1945

I can remember queuing up along the passageway to Miss Griffiths’ office, who was the Headmistress — I think that may have been in the Infants. We had to have injections for diphtheria or something like that and Miss Griffiths, who reminds me of the lady that was in ‘A Hundred and One Dalmatians’; Cruella DeVille, with her long black hair all wavy, with red painted fingernails. She seemed a very refined lady and there was all us scruffy little children standing outside her office and she came out and said ‘Will you be quiet’.

Jean Eatwell: Attendance 1941-1947

Miss Griffiths always stuck in my mind; she was like a film star. I was so used to seeing mums dressed in their ordinary clothes and doing their jobs and Miss Griffiths used to come in and, I can see her now in a very smart costume, nails and lipstick, like a film star, and it was something new to us. A very lovely and very nice lady, Miss Griffiths and she was the Headteacher.

Basil Mansfield: Attendance 1940s

We had lady teachers as well, and I must admit I never had any complaints at all with the teachers here — they taught well — we hopefully learned well, and as I say, it stood us in good stead for later life.

Derek Leney: Attended 1942-1945

Mr Webb the Deputy Head was a bit awesome and frightening, you know, a very strict man. And then there was the Headmaster in the Senior School, Mr Mills, ‘Flapper Mills’, we called him, or ‘Bristol Brabinson’ because he had two enormous ears. And at the time there was an aeroplane being launched, a big passenger plane called the Bristol Brabinson, so he, unfortunately, got that nickname!

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

I can remember Miss Baujard doing a reading assessment with me, and I think it was something to do with the Eleven Plus and we had to go in one at a time. It went into a classroom where the high desk was and I was reading away and I thought I was doing quite well and I had to say the word ‘fatigue’, and I read it as ‘fat-e-gay’. And she said ‘Oh, Elizabeth, you spoilt it all. You were doing so well, but never mind,’ and that just sticks in my mind because other teachers would have tut tufted… she was lovely. She was a really nice, caring teacher. I have only happy memories of her.

Elizabeth Corbett (nee Vickery): Attendance 1944-1947

Miss Baujard… she was lovely, she really was something special. One of the girls I was talking to today said one of the teachers used to read these Sunny Stories under the desk… We all remember Sunny Stories… I’ve still got some of those books.

Julie Cherriman: Attendance 1946-1948

You didn’t muck about with Mr Tamkin. He had you strictly under control, but he was fair. I mean you weren’t terrified of him but you respected him…but I quite liked him. I can remember when I first started. As children we used to call him Mr Tadpole, and I used to go home and say to my mum, Old Tadpole, this and Old Tadpole that, and on a parents’ evening she came up and said to him ‘Oh, good evening, Mr Tadpole,’ and I was mortified.

Elizabeth Corbett (nee Vickery): Attendance 1944-1947

I was a bit frightened of Mr Tamkin, but he was never unkind. He was quite a strict teacher.

Julie Cherriman: Attendance 1946-1948

My last year at St Luke’s and my teacher was Mr Tamkin. He was much respected and liked by most pupils, but most of us were a little overawed and afraid of him. One Christmas he lifted me up to place something on the Christmas tree on the balcony of the Junior School. I was so afraid and convinced he would throw me off the balcony, but too in awe of him to say anything. How sad to be afraid of such a good and kind teacher.

Maureen Mead (nee Gander): Attendance 1946-1952

Teachers were quite strict. If they told you to do something, I don’t think anyone in the class would outwardly disobey, you just accepted that you had to do it and that was it. Mr Shepherd was the woodwork teacher — I can still remember some of his teaching. I made a little table and I’ve still got it at home… something I created.

Brian Ravenett: Attendance 1949-50

I remember Miss Payne, ’cause if you were very good and you did well in your sort of class work during the week, then you used to get sweets. She used to send someone down the shop for a packet of sweets and you used to get these toffees and things at the end, which was quite nice really, a nice little bonus — it gave you something extra to work for.

Ray Bradford: Attendance 1952-1959

Our teacher was Miss Baldwin, this was in year 4A, but she used to alternate with Mr Tamkin. Although she was quite a stern teacher, Miss Baldwin, I think that everybody found that Mr Tamkin was particularly fearsome! Mr Tamkin was a very big chap, very big, very domineering. He had a huge presence and a very deep voice and he would command instant respect from whomever he wanted to! So yeah, he was someone you didn’t mess with.

Brian Hills: Attendance 1953-1960

Mr Avery was a gentleman and a scholar, as well as being an excellent sports and games master. He was always full of energy and enthusiasm — if all the teachers had been like him, I would never have left school! Mr Daffin was another very good teacher. He loved English essays and was always setting different topics to write about.
His words were ‘always use adjectives to describe something’. Mr Tamkin rarely smiled. If he did so it was a collector’s item! He also had the ability to be able to talk without moving his lips — rather like a ventriloquist! Of all the teachers of my era he was without doubt the least popular.

John Denyer: Attendance 1956-1960

I remember my teachers very clearly. I remember Mrs Back in the first year, who was absolutely wonderful and incredibly nice. I was very worried about coming into the school and she was very reassuring. I had Mrs Morgan in my second year and the only thing I remember of her was that we had to borrow a book from the windowsill beside the corridor there to read and I read mine in a morning and she wouldn’t let me change it for three days as I couldn’t possibly have read it! But I’m a speed reader! In my third and fourth year I had Miss Baldwin and she was a friend of my mother and she taught her too! And she was lovely and in fact we knew Miss Edghall, who was Head at the same time, she used to share a house with Miss Baldwin. We were given the same teacher for the last two years… there were two teachers, Mr Tamkin and Miss Baldwin who seemed to take turns. I heard that Mr Tamkin was very strict so I was glad to be with Miss Baldwin.

Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962

The only teacher that I can really say that I can remember was…he was — I can’t remember his name! He was a music teacher or he took the choir and I was in the choir for four years. He took us into a national competition and we actually won it. That would have been in about 1960. I always remember him because he was such a tall guy, very dapperly dressed, thin ‘tache and hardly any hair on the top of his head. He used to brush it over to one side and have these strings of hair going across his bald head — and when he used to conduct and get carried away his hair used to fly everywhere. I remember that well and he was a super chap.

Chris Eager: Attendance 1960-1964

Mr Daffin had really thick national health glasses — black-rimmed — he looked like Freddy out of ‘Freddy and the Dreamers’… We had a French teacher and it was quite something to be taught French in Junior School. Her name was Madame Baujard and she had grey hair swept off the face in a chignon in a bun…she looked very French, well, she was very French! Her approach was to really batter French into you — she sounded as though she couldn’t really speak English — which made your French better.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

We had one teacher, a lady called Miss Crowley and she had a dog called Danny. And she was allowed to bring the dog in and you’d sit in the class and she’d throw the board rubber at somebody for not doing something right and the dog would rush off and he’d bring the board rubber back to her. So if you wanted to get rid of the dog, you’d throw the board rubber out of the class and the dog would rush out the class and then she’d go after the dog because she had to bring it back!

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-1971

Ron Guilford was wonderful, the sports were an eye-opener and he didn’t just play the obvious sports. We played leg cricket instead of ordinary cricket, we’d play handball in the Hall, which was a wonderful game because it was mixed, boys and girls and you’d pick all the tall girls because you could then throw the ball to them. And he read – I was always interested in books but I’d never really grasped the full enjoyment of books until he sat down and read ‘The Hobbit’ to us, and after that I was hooked. Ever since coming here I’ve loved reading books.

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964—1971

There was a chap here who was quite famous and used to help, bless her, Mrs Taylor with the music and his name was Mr Bentham. He actually wrote a song that became quite famous and I’m sure it’s called ‘Can he count the stars?’ and he was very much into his football. Apparently, he was a very good footballer.

Larry Rushin: Attendance 1966—1975

Mr O’Flaherty was one of the teachers always winding the pupils up with his jokes and on an April Fool one day he got the class to go out in the playground and measure the playground with their fingers. We got about half way along and he come out and told everyone it was an April Fool!

Nick Vivaldi: Attendance 1970s

Mrs Goodall I always got on well with. She named her kid Joe, which I always kind of thought was really funny, you know, to name her child after me, like her favourite. She’d always kind of joke about it, and she’d use the word ‘namesake’ which I didn’t know what it meant at the time, and I kind of thought that perhaps I had to change my name because there was somebody else who was called Joe!

Joe Tunmer: Attendance 1981-1989

8 Punishment

The bloke in charge of the football was Mr Charlie Godfree and he was also the science master, and he could hit you with a piece of chalk from fifty yards if you weren’t paying attention. He had this sjambok, and he had a baby elephant’s trunk, he used to clout you round the back of the neck with it. Oh yeah!

Leonard Frost: Attendance 1925-1935

We were reading a book and it came up in the book the word ‘jambok’. Our teacher at that time was a Mr Godfree, and one of the lads asked him, ‘sir, what is a sjambok?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s a whip made of elephant’s hide, or rhinoceros hide. I’ve got one at home. I’ll bring it up the next day.’ He didn’t bring it up, he forgot, and the boy reminded him. Mr Godfree said, ‘Go down to my house. My wife will let you have it.’ He lived in the house next to the swimming pool. The boy duly trotted off, and came back with the sjambok. This was about an inch thick, solid, black, looked like ebony. It was about 18 inches to 2 foot long. Mr Godfree put it on his desk.

Later on, we were having a singing lesson, and he beat time on the desk with this sjambok. Then, because apparently I was singing the wrong notes at the wrong time, he beat me on the head with his sjambok. Bonk, bonk, bonk. Now, I do remember that vividly.

Ronald Satterley: Attendance 1926-1937

I remember Mr Godfree had this sjambok and a leather strap — he said you could have either. He had a chap there once, and he said ‘Which do you want?’ and the chap chose one. The teacher said, ‘If you’d said “Neither,” I wouldn’t have given you anything.’ So the next chap who came up when asked, ‘Which would you like?’ said ‘Neither.’ So he gave him a whack of each for not being original. You could not win!

Bert Tully: Attendance 1930-1939

Mr Godfree was a teacher all of us feared for his spelling tests each week. His test of ten new words each week required you to get all ten correct. Failure to get the ten right meant a couple of strokes with his sjambok. To get a stroke was extremely painful as it caused a welt on the fingers. One boy (Farrell) reported his punishment to his mother who came down to the school to attack Mr Godfree — which we all enjoyed very much.

Gordon Mills: Attendance 1932-1942

At the start of the term they gave you a foolscap sheet of paper, all words right the way down, up to maybe two or three hundred. They took twenty every Thursday afternoon, that was the spelling afternoon. You wrote the words down. Godfree would say ‘Right, bring your papers up.’ If he ticked off ten or less — ‘Over there!’ More than ten — ‘Go and sit down.’ And you all lined up — the ten-or-unders, and he got the African cane out and set about you. He never taught me anything because by the end of the term I didn’t use to bother. I used to think ‘Get it off your chest mate!’ It wasn’t until I started playing football for the school — he thought the world of me then, because he used to train us. He left me alone then.

Pete Pullinger: Attendance 1933-1938

PP: Ask anybody in our group who Godfree was, if they can’t remember that man they never came ‘ere! EC: He was a shocker… He had a sjambok…
PP: Made of elephant hide…
EC: Made of rhinoceros skin. Instead of having a cane he used to whip… whip us with the sjambok. One stroke of that was worse than a cane.

Peter Pullinger: Attendance 1933-1938 & Edward Cosham (left): Attendance 1934-1937

Mr Godfree used to have a thing called a sjambok — it looked like a walking stick — hanging up on a nail by the board. They used to have great long boards on the wall, and he used to have a little mirror up on the top of the board, so while he was chalking he could look in there. And it was well known for him to turn round if he spotted something and a wet duster would come across the class, and it was up to you to duck out the way if you weren’t the character he was throwing at.

Alan Carter: Attendance 1933-1935

Bob Shaw, he was 70 years old, and if he detected any misdemeanour he used to fetch the tawse. He used to grab the tails and hit you with the thick end – not that I had it – I was lucky maybe. You could bet every time a young chap would pull his hand away that he’d hit himself on the knee!

Fred Tester: Attendance 1912-1922

I think that for anything really bad there was what 1 they called the ‘tawse’, which was a leather thong with like a lot of bits on the end. In all the years I was here I can only remember one girl having to go to the Headmistress to get the tawse – I don’t know what it was for.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

If we were naughty in class we used to get strapped with a leather strap, and as I was particularly naughty, I suppose, along with others that were naughty, we were strapped quite frequently. And we learnt the trick of holding your hand out and the moment the strap hit your hand, you took your hand away to soften the blow. But he [Mr Godfree] was very good, because he not only came down with the strap, he came back up with it and caught you if you had taken your hand away, he caught you on the back of your hand with it as well. So you had to be very careful of Mr Godfree.

Anyway, at the end of the term we were going to have a different teacher. We were so pleased, because he was a tyrant that man Godfree, he really was. He called out, ‘Now, is there anybody in the class that I haven’t strapped?’ So four or five boys put their hands up. ‘Oh, good,’ he said, ‘come out in the front. I haven’t strapped you at all, have I?’ And he promptly gave them at least three on each hand because they hadn’t been strapped previously. Now that was a sadistic man if ever there was one.

Ronald Satterley: Attendance 1926-1937

You could get the strap for misbehaving, nothing to do with not learning or anything like that, only for perhaps talking or something like that.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

We had the strap, of course. There was one occasion when we were having a lesson in the classroom and a friend of mine – somehow or other we worked together for the answer – and the teacher spotted it, ‘Come to my class afterwards.’ And really, on both hands, we both got it good with the school strap, and it really, really hurt. But I think all these things, sort of, you learnt a lot by it and never regret it really.

George Pope: Attendance 1929-1937

One day after school I was helping Sidney Colby take a roll of lino to his grandmother’s house. On route Miss Atherfold was just drawing away from the school in her car when Sidney decided we should place the roll of lino on the back of her car. She stopped immediately, identified the both of us, and the next morning we were paraded before the Headmaster, Mr Raisbeck, and given the strap for our efforts!

Gordon Mills: Attendance 1932-1942

Mr Raisbeck, the Headmaster, that’s where you went for the school strap – that was severe punishment. All the other teachers had the normal strap in the class. The school strap I suppose it was a harder strap, leather, yeah. I did have it once, but I can’t remember what it was for.

Roy Long: Attendance 1932-1935

Our Headmaster was a Mr Raisbeck and we very rarely saw him, unless you were a naughty boy, when you went with fear and trembling. He used to dish out punishment with a leather strap on the hand. I never got it from him, but I used to get it from the ordinary teachers. That was a real crime, if you were sent to the Headmaster.

Edward Cosham: Attendance 1934-1937

When I moved into the Senior School there was a chap there called Mr Bradford. I can remember being very keen on my essay at this particular time and he had to leave the room and he went out and he told us to carry on with our work. And of course, kiddies being kiddies, there was paper darts, paper airplanes, elastic bands, all sorts of stuff being chucked about the place but I really didn’t take any part in this. I was interested in my essay – I wanted to complete it. So I was writing away on my essay and suddenly a paper dart landed in front of me. I picked it up and went to chuck it over my shoulder – what I hadn’t noticed was the room had gone quiet – Mr Bradford had come back in. He said, ‘Clark, get the strap.’ I got the strap by accident…I can remember getting this strap. He was at his desk on the podium, which was raised up so that he could see everybody in class. He leapt off the thing and brought the strap down, but he used to pull it back before it hit you. It was not the very fact of having the strap; it was the shame of standing out the front that was really worse than receiving the punishment. I only had it once – not six of the best or anything, just the once.

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

The teachers used to come in with their books, put them on their desks and on top of their books had a strap, and that was a warning. If you didn’t pay attention or if you did something that warranted it, that’s what you got. You won’t stop boys being boys. I had it once – I had some blotting paper in the inkwell and I flicked it on the ruler on somebody and Harry [Bradford] saw me. I think I deserved it. In the school there was a little plinth that runs along the classroom, it’s still there. And he used to stand on that plinth and you used to stand down and he’d jump and as he jumped he’d bring the strap down. Of course you never cried or anything like that but yeah, I remember. When I went home I never told my parents because if I had have done, I would have got a good telling off. It didn’t do me any harm at all.

Basil Mansfield: Attendance 1940s

Godfree was the one really – you daren’t do anything wrong with him. One day he came in and said, ‘I’ve been told I’ve got favourites in my class.’ So he took the lot of us into the Hall and strapped the lot of us. We thought if we get to the end of the line, we’ll be OK, but he’d worked himself up just right when he got to us! The only other time I really got the strap was when I was messing about at woodwork class – throwing wood at each other. I got caught. I had to march up to the Headmaster, Mr Pollard and have the strap. Something I never understood was he said, ‘This hurts me more than it hurts you.’

Ernie Pattenden: Attendance 1941-1944

I remember when one lad had done something wrong. He was brought into the classroom to be given six of the best. He was held over the desk, and the Headmaster brought another teacher in to hold him down, he struggled but the strap was flying all over the place, and having in those days only short trousers on, he ended up with welts round his legs that came up about a quarter-of-an-inch and turned purple and blue. I think the moral of this story is the other lads in the class, when they saw what he got, they were not going to do the same.

Roy Page: Attendance 1943-1951

Fear played a big part in your life. I remember Mr Mills and public beatings in the hall. About a dozen over the time we were here. The boy was bent over and caned on his behind in front of the school for a real serious offence – such as the hole in the staff room ceiling – if they’d have caught Billy Spencer… The strap was kept in Mr Mills’s room, and if you misbehaved in class bad enough to get the strap – a thing with tails on it – you were sent along there. The most terrifying part was knocking on Mr Mills’s door to actually get the strap to take back to the classroom. Davis, he used to get hold of your ear and he used to walk you along that hallway like that.

Tom Taylor: Attendance 1946-1950

I was sitting there doing nothing and Miss Winkworth called me out and she gave me such a slap. Whether I was just taking no notice of what she was saying, I don’t know!

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

Sometimes if you weren’t taking notice Mr Godfree would come round the back of your head, give you a little tap with his ring on your head, or a piece of chalk would come zooming across the room.

George Pope: Attendance 1929-1937

I was never really naughty to get really punished, just, ‘stop talking’, and rapped on the knuckles.

Joyce Campbell (nee Farley): Attendance 1933-1938

There was a teacher, I can’t remember her name but because of her I used to hate going to school when I was in the Juniors. There was a naughty little boy in our class and she used to make him stand in the wastepaper basket with the duster tied round his mouth. Every morning I used to be ill. My mother didn’t know why, but it was because I was frightened to go to school.

Yvonne Banks: Attendance 1936-1940s

I used to talk a lot and I was always being sent outside the class. But one time I thought Mr Tamkin — he was very strict — and I thought he’d said ‘go out’ and he’d said ‘Oh, she wants to go out.’ I realized afterwards what he said was ‘If you want to talk, go outside the class,’ and I had got up and walked out!

Marion Plank: Attendance 1939-1945

There was a teacher, I’m not quite sure if she was in the Juniors or the Seniors, but her name was Mrs Panning, and she used to hit you on the head with her knuckles.

Bob Pullen: Attendance 1938-1949

We had a teacher; Mr Anderson I think it was, down in woodwork. He had a ‘Mega’, a thing that gives off an electric shock — to test electricity. He used to — for half a dozen of you who had been messing about — get you out in front and hold a line, all holding hands. He used to wind this thing. The shock used to go right the way through! That’s true, honestly!

And he used to put a coin in a bucket of water if you’d been really naughty and there was just one of you. He’d say, ‘Pick the coin up; and as you went to pick it up he used to wind this thing!

John Rolfe: Attendance 1940-1950

We had one teacher and he had a ruler, and he used it across the hand. He used to call it ‘Eustace’ — this thing was Eustace. He used to come behind, and if you were misbehaving or not doing your work properly, you’d get a clout across the back of the hand or whatever.

In fact, my father came up to the school once — he was a boxer — and had a bit of a contretemps with the master, but it all finished amicably.

Derek Leney: Attendance 1942-1945

Mrs Monger used to be able to hit you at the side of the head with a bit of chalk – anywhere you were in the class she used to hit you. I don’t know how she did it.

Ernie Pattenden: Attendance 1941-1944

This room we’re sitting in now [the Music Room] used to be, as far as I can remember, the Headmaster’s room and I had the cane in there many a time. Once for putting a cricket ball through the window. He marched me straight up here, over the table, crack, crack with a cane. The Headmaster was ‘Flapper’ Mills because he had big ears. He was all right, looking back, but he wasn’t all right when we were children!

Frank Taylor: Attendance 1949-1953

One of the punishments when you went up to Junior School was writing lines if you were really bad. That was awful. I came up to Junior School – I’ve got a feeling it was a supply teacher – and I had a weak bladder. ‘Miss, I need the toilet please,’ and because this teacher didn’t know me she told me off and threatened that I was going to have to do lines, which was a fate worse than death to a little seven year old.

Jackie Robinson (nee Smith): Attendance 1952-1957

I used to get clipped round the ear. They used to come up behind you and flick your ears. There was always one particular male teacher – my brain’s gone for the name – but if I said he was quite a regimental type, it might ring a bell with somebody. He came up and thumped you behind the back of the neck. If you thought you’d got away with it you never did, because he had eyes in the back of his head, in the side of his head – he had them everywhere! I often got the chalk rubber thrown at me as well, for talking in class. And the favourite one with the lady teachers was always this ruler. They used to come up and hit you over the back of the hand with it. It did hurt. And the further they held back the end of the ruler, the more it hurt, because the more it vibrated.

Chris Eager: Attendance 1960-1964

You got hit across the knuckles with a ruler if you were rude or very bad but it was mainly the boys that copped that. I think I got the ruler across the palm of my hand once. Otherwise, standing in a corner with your back to the class. The male teachers were always firmer definitely than the women.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

I can remember one of my mates Robin, he swore at Miss Crowley and she gave him the ruler and if I remember rightly she took two wooden rulers, which we used to have. They were marked off in inches in different colours, blue and white. She got one on top of the other and she hit him so that the first one hit his hands and the second one came down on top of it, but he didn’t care.

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-1971

I didn’t get punished at all. I think I must have been a goody-goody, I don’t know. I didn’t try to be – I just enjoyed school.

Fred Farley: Attendance 1928-1935

Mr Duke had an old Dunlop trainer that he used to terrify everybody with by cracking it across a desk to the extent that the desk would jump up, and that was how that particular individual maintained discipline in his class!

Peter Ockenden: Attendance 1976-1980

That was the biggest punishment of all – being put in the punishment book so’d everybody knew that you’d misbehaved.

Fred Tester: Attendance 1912-1922

Discipline was common with us. Today they have to be persuaded; in those days we were told. Discipline was much more rigid. If you were in the playground and doing something wrong or being naughty and a teacher said, ‘Go and stand in the corner,’ you went and stood in the corner – you didn’t argue. There was no question about it and I don’t remember any child saying, ‘No, I won’t!’

Jim Elmes: Attendance 1928-1934

We did as we were told. I’d never get any sympathy from home if I’d misbehaved down here. My mother always said I’d been a ‘model pupil and a model daughter, which is rather sweet.

Doreen Broomfield: Attendance 1943-1950

We had lots of problems at home, so I don’t think that helped, but I became a little bit of a troublesome lad and could have been a tearaway. In those days I think I might have been heading in the wrong direction, and certainly punishment, the strap, sent to the Headmaster, stood in the corridor — all those sort of things came my way for silly things that young boys do…

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

We didn’t have a lot of discipline when we came here because a lot of it had been outlawed. So if you look in the record book with regards discipline and punishment you won’t find anything after a certain year. You had the obvious thing where you was kept behind after school and punishment was non-swimming and non-football but with regards actual punishment no, certainly not in my years.

Larry Rushin: Attendance 1966-1975

9 Mischief

Perhaps my most vivid memory is firing a starting pistol in the playground in May 1933. It was a birthday present. I took it to the school, loaded it in the playground, pointed it in the air and pressed the trigger. Bang! The result was electric — dead silence followed. A teacher came running up and took the gun away. I was brought before the Headteacher, Miss Dutton-Briant, but when I told her it was my birthday present she gave it back to me with instructions not to bring it to the school in future!

Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927-1933

EH: I pinched the school strap. When we left school, they – the decorators – used to move in. They let us in the school, unofficially it was. It was in Mr Raisbeck’s office, where they used to keep the school strap, he was the Headmaster. And lo and behold I found this bit of – well it was as long as that [about 12 inches] – it was the school strap. If you’d done something wrong, the teacher used to say, ‘Go and get the school strap’ and straight away the Headmaster knew that you’d done something wrong. I picked that up. And Freddy Wyndham, he had this twisted bit of leather – called the sjambok.
RF: It was an elephant’s tail.
LF: No, an elephant’s trunk.
RF: Not a trunk – it’d knock you out!
LF: No, a baby elephant’s trunk it was! Well, whatever, tail or trunk…
EH: Anyway we had it!
LF: Yeah that’s right, whether you liked it or not.
EH: I think, if I remember rightly, that I cut the thing up to make little leather hinges for my rabbit hutch! I’m not afraid to say this because it’s way past it, you know; you don’t have a crime number for this now!

Edward Humphrey: Attendance 1930-1939 Raymond Frost: Attendance 1929-1939 & Leonard Frost: Attendance 1925-1935

Stella Moore sat behind me in junior school — our row of desks were named Australia house. Stella was a jumpy type of girl prone to getting very excited over anything, which I used to play upon. One Monday morning I pulled from my pocket a winkle I had saved from Sunday. I poked the winkle half up my nose, turned round to Stella and proceeded to pull the winkle from my nose and ate it. Stella went into hysterics causing Miss Atherfold to come charging to where I was sitting to ask Stella what the problem was. I just shook my head and played dumb!

Gordon Mills: Attendance 1932-1942

The desks were individual desks with your own inkwell and a nib that you could break quite easily. You could throw them as darts actually, if you were quite clever and they used to stick into the wood, and the other favourite thing was blotting paper dipped in the inkwell put on the end of the ruler and you’d flip it. Made a lovely mess.

Stanley Ford: Attendance 1939-1941

Smoking seemed to be a phase that everybody had to go through as you progressed. You got into the senior class of the Senior Boys, then you started having your first puff of the cigarette. I used to play truant more than was healthy for me — not during my Infant or Junior days, but in the Senior School — and go off to the races. I developed my first love for horse racing through doing that and it’s still with me now. Scrumping was another great thing – there’s a number of gardens around here that we raided!

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

Bird nesting [collecting eggs] was a great pastime, so the temptation to climb into the loft was too much for two of us. One dinnertime I kept watch while my accomplice got into the loft to get pigeon eggs. But then — disaster — a foot went through the ceiling and plaster and debris came down in the staff room. Big punishment — I can still feel the lash of the strap.

Terry Beddell: Attendance 1939-1949

A few boys used to get into the loft, especially up into the bell tower, to collect the pigeons’ eggs. One day, Billy Spencer he was rummaging about up there, above the staff room ceiling, where they were all sitting having their cups of tea, and through the ceiling came a leg. And the hole in the ceiling was something everybody just had to see after it — I don’t think they ever caught him…

Tom Taylor: Attendance 1946-1950

Was it when we were in Miss Holford’s — I don’t know, but John Farnham was number one, with I think it was called, ‘You’re the Voice’. And it had this big — kind of anthem, a chorus. And if Miss Holford was late, Ben Preston would get up on the desk, and lead us all in a rousing rendition of ‘You’re the Voice’.

Joe Tunmer: Attendance 1981-1989

10 Fights & Bullies

There was always one or two ‘catty’ girls, who would have it in for one of the others, but not spiteful or anything. I think children in those days were much better behaved than now — they might have been naughty and hated each other, but they wouldn’t be cruel.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

In the Infants there were two gangs. One leader was Scales, his father was a policeman, and the other one was Colby. They weren’t bullying gangs just rivalry. There was no bullying in those days well, maybe just a little bit.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

I was put in my place once or twice by other older children, but it never had any lasting effect on me, which I put in the context of persistent bullying. I think that must be horrible when you’re persecuted. We certainly had a pecking order and if you didn’t respect that, then maybe you got tweaked a bit.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

This boy, he was a brilliant scholar, he stood out from everybody else – he was different from everybody else. We used to say to him ‘What’s the answer to this one? And if you don’t tell me I’m going to clip you one!’ Looking back, he had a terrible life. People used to pick on him.

Tom Taylor: Attendance 1946-1950

I did get bullied, my sister and I did. My mother went out to sort the gang out. It was girls, pulling our hair and that sort of thing on the way home, calling us names. Good old Mum.

Sylvia Pickett (nee Stephens): 1946-1948

It was a rough school, a lot of fights and that. One incident, this fellow’s started on me and he’s got me on the floor, giving me a good hiding and my brother Tom has come over and hit him on top of the head with a cricket bat! That was in that playground out there, and I remember him saying, ‘You wait till your brother leaves this school, I’ll have him.’ But he never did.

Frank Taylor: Attendance 1949-1953

I remember we used to have gangs when nearly the whole playground would divide into two sides, and attack each other — not viciously. One of those days a few of us had catapults and folded up paper. And I remember getting Stephen Lindsay in the face. Of course he went off crying and I got summoned to the Headmistress where I got a slap on my bare leg.

Peter Warland: Attendance 1961-1967

The only fight I ever had at school was here, and — this is a real confession now — I got into a fight with a girl! She was called Sandra Gunn, who was about a foot taller than me, and she packed a serious wallop. I can’t remember what the fight was over. I lost seriously. We used to do this thing where — whenever there was a fight in the playground and, it’s probably still done today all the kids would suddenly stop doing what they were doing, and pile around and shout, ‘bundle…bundle’. I remember being in the middle of the circle — with her pushing my face into the tarmac! And everyone was shouting ‘bundle!’

Reuben Taylor: Attendance 1972-1978

11 Playtime

The girls and boys were very much separated for play. The entrances were labelled ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ then. Segregated for play and came in separate entrances. It seemed natural as we played different sorts of games. We didn’t want to play with them – that came later!

Dorothy Jupp: Attendance 1928-1932

We had all of the big playground next to the swimming pool and I remember a gate was made into the wall to the Infants’ playground. We had a small drinking tap but no play equipment at all. We girls used to bring skipping ropes or tops and whips or we played Hopscotch or ‘the big ship sails through the ally-ally-ooh’ – a great long chain of people. There was a white line painted across the playground and the girls were on one side where the back gardens are, and the boys and their toilets on the street side. The boys played marbles or conkers or just seemed to rush around!

June Marshall (nee Pierce): Attendance 1936-1942

The girls used to be in one part of the playground and the boys in the other and there was a dotted line actually from the corner of school, which sort of used to indicate that half’s the girls’ side and the other side is the boys’ side! Whether in fact that dotted line did actually mean anything like that I don’t know, but that’s how it used to work. Except when we had some snow, then it was great fun! The girls used to get snowballed by the boys and they would always do the wrong thing, which was to go into a corner. They’d all huddle in a corner and the boys used to throw the snowballs at the top of the corner and they used fall down their necks from above! You didn’t actually have to hit the girls as you could throw it up in the corner and down it would fall! And instead of spreading out, they all used to group together so they were dead easy to hit! That was quite fun!

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

Girls seemed to be this end and boys would always be the other end, near the swimming pool. We didn’t go in different entrances because when we were here the top floor was just Senior Boys. This playground here would be thick with boys.

Doreen Broomfield: Attendance 1943-50

Mixed up with everything else that was going on, the girls would do their skipping and hopscotch, and the boys…the boys would play cricket and football, all those sort of things.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

I don’t know what it was called, but we were stood round in a circle and then one girl would be on the outside, start running round, tap one of the others on the shoulder and she’d got to run the other way to get back to the place first. Whether that was ‘tag’, it might have been tag.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

My old mate and I, we were both speedway fans… and we used to go round the playground imagining we were motorcycling and shooting the grit, like speedway riders do.

George Pope: Attendance 1929-1937

If you got hit with the ball then you were ‘it’ and you had to hit someone else with the ball to make them ‘it’ — running around the playground like mad.

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

We would play tag, and there was a variation, it was where you had to catch somebody who was the person who chases and then tap them on the head three times and then I think if you did that…’Release’, that’s what it was called and that’s how you released them. Of course, football and cricket — all that was played in the playground with tennis balls.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

Running and jumping, that was good fun and catching each other and that didn’t involve a ball so that was all right! There were circles painted in the playground, large circles. I don’t know what they were there for but we used to use them as ‘home’ so you could run from one to the other.

Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962

Whipping tops became popular and these could be whipped along the pavements and roads. There were several varieties, one of which was called the ‘window breaker’ and was shaped rather like an upside-down pear. They were all made of turned wood and had a metal stud in the base, which kept them spinning.

Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927-1933

We used to bring our tops and whips with us and save our pennies to buy coloured chalks to put a pattern on and then you had a stick with a leather thong that you wound around that.

Dorothy Jupp: Attendance 1928-1932

The girls played hopscotch a lot. We loved hopscotch… with a piece of chalk.

Eileen Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s

I had a very special skipping rope, of which I was proud because it had ball bearings in it which made it easier to turn… that was the Rolls Royce of skipping…

Eileen Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s

The girls of course, when we were in Junior School, used to enjoy skipping and used to have the big rope and sometimes the lads used to whizz in and have a couple of jumps with the girls and back out again…

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

There were fads. There were crazes of things…Everybody had a top and the next couple of weeks we’d have a hoop or a skipping rope. Great long skipping ropes where you used to run and jump over and they used to make it wavy…

Elizabeth Corbett (nee Vickery): Attendance 1944-1947

Everyone did skipping – that was the great game in the playground. Nobody could afford an actual rope. You just went and bought a bit of washing line. And French skipping, somebody who was clever enough to bring in a load of elastic bands, that was a good game, everyone enjoyed that.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

In those days Cowboys and Indians was a favourite game and that type of thing. A lot of my friends from the school used to go to the ABC Minors at the Astoria in Marlborough Place on a Saturday morning and that was absolutely marvellous, because they used to show lots of serials and the Western films and ‘Journey into Space’ and all that sort of stuff, and a lot of the things that were shown in the films were often played out in the playground.

John Washington: Attendance 1949-1955

I was talking to one of the children that showed us round and I said ‘Do you still play cops and robbers?’ and she said ‘Yeah we still play cops and robbers,’ and I said ‘Do you still link arms?’ and she said ‘Oh yeah we still do chains.’ And I can remember as a kid you’d get a mate and you’d put your arm round and you’d go round the playground shouting out ‘Who’s playing cops and robbers?’ and people would join in.

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-1971

The most prolific of games and interest in the playground, was collecting cigarette cards. These cards, with pictures on one side and detailed information on the other, were mostly obtained from packets of John Player’s. Each subject was produced in a series of fifty and we swapped cards in an endeavour to collect a full set. Apart from this, a game was devised which entailed a card being rested against a wall, then those taking part took turns at flicking a card at it…and the one who knocked the resting card over picked up all the cards.

Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927-1933

Cigarette cards — you’d throw them up against the wall and those that landed on top of each other you’d pick them up. There was a game which was sort of like, a form of shove ha’penny really, except it was played with brass disks rather than money, we couldn’t afford money — we probably only had about thruppence pocket money to last a fortnight!

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

Cigarette cards up against the wall. You flipped the cigarette cards against them and if you knocked them down you could pick them up and they were yours. There was marbles, the red alleys; they were the treasured ones.

Stanley Ford: Attendance 1939-1941

What’s now garages or something, there used to be a shed at the bottom of the other playground there, that used to be a completely open place where you’d shelter if it was raining, basically… and we used to play card games there and marbles. We used to collect cards to throw on other cards and so on.

Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962

I remember games from the playground: saving and swapping cheese labels and stamps, collecting paste gems from old jewellery and swapping them — keeping them in a small tobacco tin. A ‘techni’ was rare — this was probably a rhinestone.

Denise Young (nee Bignell): Attendance 1947-1951

Another real fad that came in at that time was you had a tobacco tin full of pretty buttons or bits of your mum’s jewellery — beads, and you’d do bead swapping. Boys and girls — they all had these tobacco tins full of bits and pieces. Everyone wanted my chandelier drops, which I’d nicked from my Nan’s chandelier upstairs and she didn’t notice — you could swap one of those for ten real pearls!

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

We had these ‘biff bats’ in the War – like a ping pong bat and a piece of elastic with a rubber ball on the end and you used to play with that – that was good fun.

Jean Stedman: Attendance 1941-1947

I can remember in the playground we used to make these triangular-like Frisbees, before Frisbees came along, in fact. And we used to throw them to each other and we used to make them out of interwoven lolly sticks we found in the playground. So you’d go round and wait until somebody discarded a lolly stick and then you’d fight to see how many people you could get the lolly sticks from.

Chris Eager: Attendance 1960-1964

The best toy in the playground, which you couldn’t fob children off with now, was a tennis ball and a long sock. You were really someone if you had one of those. The tennis ball went in the sock and you stood against the playground wall and just battered hell out of that ball, really; above your head, over your head, between your legs if you were really clever and it carried on the whole playtime.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

There were crazes. I was here when we had Kernockers with the two plastic balls on the string that used to go up and down. Kids also played ‘lolly sticks’, where you had a lolly stick and somebody else held their lolly stick in between two fingers and then you had to try and break it with yours and then you held yours out and they’d try. It was like conkers, you know, but you played it with lolly sticks and then you’d write on the lolly stick how many times you’d broken somebody’s stick.

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-1971

We used to play bin ball in the playground. Bin ball is the best game of all time. I think it was definitely a teacher called Mrs Ward who introduced me to the game. It’s kind of like cricket. You have a big upturned bin, and you play with a tennis ball and like a rounders paddle. I’m not sure if you play it in two teams or if only one person is in at a time to bat, a bit like cricket, but basically all of the fielders are also bowlers. I guess it’s basically like cricket – but you don’t have to get the ball back to any particular bowler and you’re continually being bowled at from any side. Yeah, bin ball was great.

Daniel Hill: Attendance 1977-1984

On the balcony up there in the Hall was the library. And we had a Scalextric club with a four-lane Scalextric track up there. And that sort of went away, and then school life revolved around Friday afternoon Subbuteo and games and handball. With Mr Guilford, you used to have maths sheets and if you were good at maths he’d set you like, ten sheets that week, whereas if somebody wasn’t good they had to do two sheets. But you had to do the same amount of sheets to achieve the same aims so, if you wanted to play Subbuteo on Friday afternoon — you had to do your ten maths sheets that week…plus three English sheets plus two science sheets whatever, and you had to achieve that. If you didn’t achieve it by Friday afternoon you weren’t allowed to play Subbuteo.

Neil Rogers: Attendance 1974-1978

One of the things that was introduced was Subbuteo by Mr Guilford and we actually had a full
Subbuteo league. It used to go on lunchtimes and break times. He was always Spurs because he’s a Spurs supporter and you just basically brought your own favourite team. The balcony then became the major focus for a big Scalextric track that was put up there. I think it was something like four or six lane. It was properly done by way of a proper championship — your names went into a hat, so you had the inside lane and outside lane, and you did race a championship. It was it was probably one of the best things that was here actually — after school activity wise. So that went on into the evenings and because of that there was some noises went about and the ghost of the tower reared its ugly head…

Larry Rushin: Attendance 1966-1975

Down in the shed that’s all bricked up now, that used to be all open and it used to be our shelter from the rain. I think it used to be the boys’ toilets actually before that and we used to play cards and marbles underneath there. So it was great, even if it was raining you could still play. I lost many a marble down there.

Chris Eager: Attendance 1960-1964

You had to get your marble into the centre of the drain cover because it used to be rigged off. And that became very, very big and you used to see fights start because someone wanted that drain and someone else would be on it, so the fights would start, because there’s obviously not that many drain covers.

Larry Rushin: Attendance 1966-1975

RT: Marbles were a huge thing to play – everybody fighting over a particular kind of marbles.
NR: Shiny ball-bearing ones, weren’t they?
RT: Yeah…
NR: They were played on drain covers…
RT: Yeah…that’s right…Yes.
NR: You had to get it in the drain handle.

Neil Rogers: Attendance 1974-1978 & Reuben Taylor: Attendance 1972-1978

In the winter in that far corner, we used to make a big slide on frosty mornings, a huge slide all down the slope – that was fun. I’ve still got scars on my knees from the playground… from the football! It was a bit gravelly.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

I remember when the snow was on the ground and absolutely covered the playground and down Queen’s Park Rise we made a slide. And we used to slide down the playground and it used to be ice. Yeah, thick ice, that’s right. You used to fall over and think nothing of it.

Ernest Johnson: Attendance 1929-1939

In the winter we used to have a great big slide, if it snowed. We used to keep sliding down the same piece of the playground and it used to get like glass. You used to run and slide on your boots for, perhaps, thirty-forty yards. We used to go from the top corner where the air raid shelter was straight the way down the steepest part to where the sheds sat.

Tom Taylor & Frank Taylor: Attendance 1946-1953

They was always freezing up, you know always frozen up — ‘You can’t use the toilets, they’re frozen.’ I dunno what we used to do then, you know, if you wanted the toilet – crossed your legs and hoped for the best, I suppose!

Raymond Frost: Attendance 1929-1939

Our toilets were outside, separate ones for boys and girls. It was jolly cold in the winter and there was never any toilet paper and no sinks to wash your hands.

June Marshall (nee Pierce): Attendance 1936-1942

I remember the outside loos, which as children, if it was a cold winter, we used to think ‘I hope the toilets are frozen’, because if you got to school and the toilets were frozen, you were sent home and you had the day off.

Basil Mansfield: Attendance 1940s

I remember the winters, the winter of ’47, in particular. I can’t remember what the heating system must have been at the school, but the school used to get so desperately cold and we had outside toilets with no roof to them, so they really were outside toilets and they would freeze up. In the playground, the toilets were, and we’d be sent home often. We seemed to get sent home a lot during the winter, because all the piping — there was no water at the school or anything. It was all frozen…

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

The strongest memory was being terrified of being locked in the loos if I went to the toilet after school finished. It took me until I was in Senior School to realise they had evening classes and the school probably didn’t shut ’til about nine o’clock!

Jeanette Eason: Attendance 1960s

The air raid shelters weren’t open. I suppose they were about three foot, three foot six off the ground with a great big chunky concrete top on them and we used to like sitting on them but we weren’t supposed to and to go down the steps to the door — well that was a real felony! We didn’t go down there because we didn’t know what would happen to us.

Jackie Eason: Attendance 1950s

12 Sports & Games

We walked down to the swimming pool — it was quite unusual to have it and other schools used it. I didn’t like it! I didn’t like it because it made my tummy ache — it was cold and the water was cold.

Kathleen Back: Attendance 1908-1915

I wasn’t actually keen on swimming. They had swimming sports here and occasionally they would go to North Road Baths to compete with other schools, Park Street, Elm Grove and Lewes Road.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

I took swimming lessons but I could never learn. I tried and tried. I used to say I can do ten yards but as soon as I started off, I floundered!

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

Before we went into the swimming pool we had to practise the strokes, standing up in pairs. Also, we’d lie across a chair and hold the chair. We used to go home in those days for lunch, but on the day we had the swimming club we were allowed to bring lunch and have it on the desk. I can remember a club gala, when we went across the water in a nightdress with a candle!

Edna Dray: Attendance 1927-1931

Strange to mention, I cannot recall ever going to the St Luke’s swimming baths, although these were next to the playground!

Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927-1933

When I was in the Junior School I was taken round to the swimming pool to be taught to swim, and knowing not the first thing about it I jumped in the deep end and had to be dragged out.

Jim Elmes: Attendance 1928-1934

They had woodwork classes next door to the swimming bath. I was a regular at the swimming baths, most days at the end of school.

Fred Hogbin: Attendance 1930-1933?

When I was in the Junior School I was taken round to the swimming pool to be taught to swim, and knowing not the first thing about it I jumped in the deep end and had to be dragged out.

Jim Elmes: Attendance 1928-1934

Our class took weekly swimming lessons in the school pool. We shared the pool with children from Park Street School who, on our swimming days, used the changing rooms as we dressed and left. On this particular day I, along with Eric Paris and Sidney Colby, were almost changed and ready to leave when we heard voices coming from the adjoining changing room. Eric Paris asked me to give him a bunk up to see, which I did. Almost immediately a girl in the changing room let go a scream as if she was being murdered. This brought the swimming teacher, Miss Atherfold, running full tilt. As a result of this rather harmless episode all three of us boys were banned from the swimming pool for the rest of our stay at St. Luke’s School. One of the punishment books at the school shows that I received one stroke of the strap for ‘Disgusting behaviour’.

Gordon Mills: Attendance 1932-1942

The changing rooms were sparse. One of my friends used to climb up — you could look over the top – and his habit was trying to look over the top at the girls changing in the next cubicles, that was my friend Gordon, Gordon Mills.

Stanley Ford: Attendance 1939-1941

Mrs Drinkwater is remembered with particular affection because she took the swimming club that used the puddle down the road Tuesday lunchtimes. All those who had managed to satisfy the authorities that they could swim their twenty yards were allowed to join the club and so you went for an extra splash and further tuition and lots of mucking about with the girls, of course. Then you came back and went in the shelter at the girls’ end of the playground to enjoy an Oxo and whatever you might have brought — a sandwich or whatever. The stench of Oxo I have now in my nostrils.

Keith Bergin: Attendance 1936-1940

He had a belt and he pulled you along, you know, the length of the bath — the man with a pole… so if you were going to drown you could grab the pole.

Eileen Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s

Miss Baldwin taught swimming. I had a certificate for the width — but I am sure that I put my foot down half way!

Pamela Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s

We all had swimming lessons and we were all expected to learn to swim before we left this school. I loved it. I still sometimes go down there. Of course it’s different because the cubicles have gone.

Doreen Broomfield: Attendance 1943-1950

I was very slow to learn to swim. My mother was a great friend of the caretaker and his
wife, who lived in the little house next door to it, and he used to let me go in before the clubs came in. I did learn to swim then – and he had a lot of patience.

Julie Cherriman: Attendance 1946-1948

I used to go swimming, and it was always freezing cold. It was so cold in that place, those white tiles, and I never learnt to swim all the time I was at the school. I didn’t learn to swim until I was sixteen, and I think I was actually put off by the St Luke’s swimming baths.

John Washington: Attendance 1949-1955

My mum and dad wouldn’t let me take swimming lessons (and I can’t swim now). When my dad came back [from the War] he was so protective of me that basically it was very difficult to do anything that took me out of the general swing of things.

It was very unusual for a school to have a swimming pool, people used to say, ‘You’re lucky, you’ve got a swimming pool at your school,’ so even though I didn’t swim, I sort of felt proud we had a pool here.

Brian Ravenett: Attendance 1949-1950

The swimming pool was cold; it was freezing. It used to be all glass, you could look out, and I think all the heat went out of the place. It was terrible, it was horrible. It was so cold and it stunk of chlorine. One of the worse lessons ever. I really did hate that. And you had to swim from one corner to another to get your ten yards swimming certificate.

Alan Stafford: Attendance 1953-1959

I remember not learning to swim! I was asthmatic, went under the water once or twice and the chlorine really got to me. It was frightening. We had to hop on one foot while holding afloat and I couldn’t do this and ended up under the water. I was having a problem anyway, as every time I walked in the chlorine hit me. In the end I was excused swimming. I never learned to swim — in fact, I’ve just started now!

Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962

I’d not been doing my work properly one day and was stopped from swimming. I cried for the whole hour they went swimming. It was a blistering hot summer day and everybody came back looking refreshed and happy — and there was me with red eyes.

Chris Eager: Attendance 1960-1964

We felt privileged – it was one of the things that set the school apart, because you knew that you were going to learn to swim. Other schools might use it, but you knew that if you came from St Luke’s, you swam. It seemed such a luxury then.

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-1971

The swimming pool was there, but we were not allowed to use it is as the Canadian and Polish soldiers who were billeted in private houses in Brighton used the pool for wartime training — such as falling into the water from a rubber dingy with all their uniform and guns and managing to swim! We sometimes used to watch them on our way home from school.

June Marshall (nee Pierce): Attendance 1936-1942

The swimming pool was closed down when I was about 11 or 12 – for maybe a year at least. When you kicked your football over the fencing at the back of the playground, which you would do all the time, or hit a tennis ball over, you’d go round after school along an alley-way at the back of Queen’s Park Terrace and from there you could climb over. When the swimming pool was closed down, that was really great. There was this deserted building, completely unsafe no doubt, and I suppose it was for a whole summer you could just go in and play. The pool was empty of water but full of rubble. It was great.

Daniel Hill: Attendance 1977-1984

Snowy Parker, if he saw you fighting in the playground, he would separate you and say ‘In the ring Thursday night after school’ and whether you wanted to or not that’s how you settled your differences. I think the boxing tickets were a ha’penny a time. Mr Watson, he used to give you, if you behaved yourself, so many tickets for the boxing and he had a heart of gold. He also used to have a weak ticker, and if he had to punish anybody he always came over very ill and two of you’d rush up and say ‘Hang on sir, hang on, sir’ and help him back to his feet.

Leonard Frost: Attendance 1925-1935

I was very keen on boxing. I remember all the chairs being put round in a square. I often fought for St Luke’s against other schools, one of the toughest being the Mite Oak School at Ports/ode. The bad boys were sent there, most of them came from London, and they were very tough. The biggest crowd turned up to watch a fight I had with Mink)/ Peacock who was the school bully here in those days. He never went in for boxing but he used to beat up the kids in the playground. We had a fall out and the teacher made us settle it in the ring. It was a rough and tumble with all the chairs flying in all directions, so the teacher stopped it with no winner and made us shake hands.

Fred Hogbin: Attendance 1930-1933?

I wasn’t any good at football or cricket, but I was in the boxing squad, and we used to have a bout every week. We used to make a temporary ring of wooden chairs, the backs to make the ring. I used to fight the same chap every week, his surname was ‘Innocent’ and we were friends. I think Mr Parker was the boxing instructor. This was in the Hall. The school captain who was also captain of the school football team and the cricket team came to me once and he thought he would like to have a go at boxing, so he asked me to give him a bout. And actually I knocked him right through the chairs! Which, you know, if somebody’s very popular everybody really dislikes them because they’re good at everything, went down very well! He never came again.

Bert Tully: Attendance 1930-1939

Mr Parker was a teacher here, he used to take us for boxing — Snowy Parker we called him. It was more of a punishment than anything ’cause my colleague who I came to this school with, Freddy Wyndham, we used to get up to anything. Being the villains so called, of the school, Mr Parker would say, ‘Right you’ll go in the ring and sort it out.’

Edward Humphrey: Attendance 1930-1939

My only sport in school was boxing, and I loved it. Mr Pollard, who was our Headmaster, had me in the study one day. He said ‘I want to speak to you seriously about sport. You don’t play football?’ I said ‘No – I don’t like team sports, I don’t like the idea of if one man makes a mistake, ten men have got to work like mad to make up for it. I prefer one to one – if one man makes a mistake he and he alone pays for it.’ After trying athletics and cricket, he said, ‘so, boxing’s your only sport? That’s unhealthy.’

We had a good boxing team, but the one school we could never beat was Queen’s Park because they were strong. Boxing was in the Hall here. We used to train outside by running around the streets and at the racecourse.

Brian Bergin: Attended 1937-1948

I can remember that in the evenings they used to have boxing matches here because we used to look out of our window and see them all coming in.

Julie Cherriman: Attendance 1946-1948

Monday afternoons we used to go for football practice mainly. I enjoyed it very much, football. I was reasonable – I did make the school team, the Senior Team. We used to play at Moulsecoomb then, Saturday mornings…) was fairly accomplished but not brilliant! We had quite a good football team, several played for Sussex.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

When I was in for an examination, which meant that I could go to the Intermediate School I didn’t fill in anything in my exam paper, so that I would go on in the Seniors and play football with my friends. I just left it blank, and of course failed. So I played football the next year with the boys!

Ronald Satterley: Attendance 1926-1937

I played for the school eleven at Moulescoomb. I remember taking a corner and nobody touched it. It went in the goal. And I got thruppence off my mum and dad.

Ernest Johnson: Attendance 1929-1939

Mr Godfree, he used to be the teacher who ran the school football team, he came into my class and said to the teacher, Mr Harris, ‘Are there any boys here who are good enough to play for the school football team?’ My teacher said, ‘Yes, Long.’ So he said, ‘stand up Long.’

And I stood up. I was no bigger than I am now. So he looked at me and said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to put some dung in your shoes before you can play for the school football team.’

Roy Long: Attendance 1932-1935

We used to practise out in the playground — that’s all we had. We put various things down for the goalposts, and Godfree used to line up the forwards and the people round the back and the one goalkeeper, and we used to just belt the ball up and down the pitch. For actual football we used to go over to Whitehawk Bottom. If you go over the Race Hill, there’s Whitehawk School and there used to be a flat area where we used to play football. Some of us used to be sent out with these long poles, which became the goalposts, and the rest of the class, or even two classes, used to march over the hill. It was quite a thing to stand there and see all these boys coming over the hill.

Alan Carter: Attendance 1933-1936

It was the school in the town best known for its sporting activities. With football it used to be the Barlow Cup. And I did play for this school when we played against Coombe Road and we had the honour of playing at the Goldstone Ground. We beat Coombe Road 1-0.

Edward Cosham: Attendance 1934-1937

I loved the sport. Most of all, the football and the cricket with Harry Bradford and Mr Anderson, who taught me to love sport and be disciplined.

Basil Mansfield: Attendance 1940s

We used to play football down Whitehawk Bottom, we called it Piggery Bottom because of all the pigsties.

Pete Pullinger: Attendance 1933-1938

There is a soccer game that stands out like hell in my mind. One winter we went to the London Road pitches. We were beaten 9—1. I can remember how depressed we were. I was playing in goal — and I was mega depressed.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

We had to walk to Whitehawk, play football and then walk all the way up the hill back home again. That was the thing in those days. No minibuses — it was walk everywhere.

Brian Ravenett: Attendance 1949-1950

We had to play football and I was bad at that as well! I don’t remember where we went to play, but my brother tells me we had to go to Whitehawk and we had to walk, but later on they lay on buses.

Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962

I would go to matches Saturday mornings down at the Whitehawk pitches, which is where they were played because there’s nowhere to play up here. And so I’d traipse over the top of the Race Hill to go and watch the team. I was kind of, the mascot. It was great when we won but when we lost I’d go, ‘Hard luck,’ — and they’d throw the ball at me!

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-1971

For some reason, the master decided I was a cricketer and should be capable of opening the innings for the Seniors’ second team, which was wrong, as I was just a hit and miss merchant. I was never shown how to hold the bat properly. I said to my friends ‘I’ll lift my bat when the ball comes in my direction.’ They said ‘You won’t, will you?’ This was playing against Patcham School. Duly I did this. I was then demoted to about number five or six. I failed to score on the next five occasions! The penny dropped with the master that he had made a terrible mistake in choosing me, let alone as an opening batsman! I think he might have chosen me because I could bowl some leg breaks — which was possibly my strongest point in cricket.

Brian Bergin: Attended 1937-1948

I played for the school and captained it and we were quite successful. I actually went on to bigger things as well because of it – all because of Mr Guilford. The school, as you are well aware, has always had a good tradition with sport.

Larry Rushin: Attendance 1966-1975

There used to be an inter-schools event at Preston Park, that was all the Brighton schools, and that was quite a big event. We had some quite accomplished athletes at St Luke’s. I never made it into athletics, although I was fairly good.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

A major event was the Schools’ Sports Day, when all the Brighton schools competed in athletic events. This was held at the former cricket ground in Preston Park, and we all had time off to give support to our school. My brother, who was with the Senior Boys, won several medals and cups for the school, both singly and together with others in the team.

Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927-1933

We used to go down Whitehawk Bottom and race. Mr Sharman was our training athletics teacher here. He was a real cracker. We used to practise to run from the bottom classroom – the hurdles were at various distances – up to what is now the music room.

Edward Cosham: Attendance 1934-1937

They used to use this passageway up here in the school for hurdling practice. That’s where we had to do our practice because we had no fields or anything, unless we went to Piggery Bottom, which was in Whitehawk.

Pete Pullinger: Attendance 1933-1938

Mondays, I think it was, we used to have to walk up Freshfield Road right down into the dip at Whitehawk Bottom where we used to practise our running races. Then walk all the way back. We used to have the Sports Days in Preston Park, where now they play the cricket and cycle racing.

Edward Cosham: Attendance 1934-1937

Usually twice a week we would have what they called ‘drill’ in the School Hall, just exercises, and then once a week we had games. Stool ball was in the summer, sometimes in the school playground, sometimes down in Queen’s Park and sometimes up on the Race Hill. In the winter, it was netball at the same places.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

13 School dinners

Everybody went home for lunches.

Kathleen Back: Attendance 1908-1915

There were no school dinners, so everybody went home to their dinner. Often if Mum had been busy in the shop with Dad all the morning, I’d go through into the kitchen and find the potatoes in the sink half peeled and I’d have to get on with that – see what was for dinner, and cook it! Then back to school for two o’clock.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

We used to go home for a proper midday meal… Mother cooked a meal in them days.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

School meals! What are they? There was no such thing as school meals! This was the school for the area. I lived up Down Terrace, which is 200 yards away and used to come to school in the morning, go home to dinner at dinnertime – everyone did and come back to school, at two o’clock.

Fred Farley: Attendance 1928-1935

When you were an older Junior, if you were in the top class you could wait on the Infants and you had your dinner free for that week. I remember a little boy and it was spaghetti and meat and he said, ‘Oh miss, I don’t want any of those worms.’ And one day it was jacket potato and I turned mine over and there was all mud on it still. I didn’t help any more. I went home to lunch. I couldn’t stand it.

Yvonne Banks: Attendance 1936-1940s

In the wartime when I was here if you stayed to school lunches and you were in the older Juniors, you used to go down and help the Infants have their school lunches. And if you were doing that you sometimes got picked to take the lunches up to the teachers. You used to go up and down the stairs, take their lunch and then take their plates away, then take their sweet in to them. And if you did that you got your dinner free. The dinners at the time were sixpence.

Marion Plank: Attendance 1939-1945

BP: We did have a school canteen, and that was down in the lower hall…
EP: I remember we called it frog’s spawn, wasn’t it, tapioca?
BP: I used to like rice, with a spoon of jam in it…and I can tell you how much it was.
It used to cost 5p.

Bob Pullen: Attendance 1938-1949 & Eileen Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s

For school dinners we went over into the prefabs, they were mobile buildings over in the far playground and all I can remember about them was my utter dislike of peas and it’s remained with me to the rest of this day — ‘cos they made me eat them.

Gwen Cole: Attendance 1942-1949

The school meal system I remember clearly because we were entitled to free meals because my mother was a widower. The awful system that we had in those days was that they had a separate queue for those that were entitled to free meals, so you were very readily identified.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

I can remember the canteen. That was good. I’m trying to think of my favourite thing there — I didn’t have many school dinners. Oh, the custard! The custard was very creamy. It was very, very good custard!

Ray Fowler: Attendance 1953-1959

I remember the very first time I ever stayed to lunch and I can see the meal in front of me now. It was basically a white plate, a big pile of mashed potato and something, which was probably some sort of gravy around it. It didn’t have any meat as far as I can remember. It just looked like Oxo but as soon as I had eaten it, I was sick. And that was the one and only time in all my life here at St Luke’s I stopped to lunch!

Brian Hills: Attendance 1953-1960

We used to go into the canteen — it’s funny ’cause the canteens were down there, [in the playground] they were in the Nissan buildings. They used to cook centrally somewhere in Brighton and the food used to come in containers and the dinner ladies used to come out. I don’t think the food was a very high standard, the dessert was the big thing, kids like something sweet. The Headmaster would sit there after his meal with his hands behind his head and everyone would comment on him! We used to have water on the tables and the beakers used to have numbers under them. Isn’t it weird the things you remember?

Alan Stafford: Attendance 1953-1959

I can remember my mother saying she had a fit one day when I came home and apparently I said, ‘Oh guess what Mum – I had sex today!’ Of course she was taken aback and she said ‘What do you mean you had sex?’ What I meant was the food was so good I went up for seconds, we used to call it ‘secs’. She wondered what I was talking about!

Jackie Eason: Attendance 1950s

When we had eaten our school meal we were given a slice of carrot to eat. This was supposed to clean our teeth. I didn’t like carrot, so I used to kick mine under the table! My mother wrote a letter to the Headmistress – Miss Mason – asking if I could eat an apple instead. She would not agree to this, as she said that everyone must be treated the same.

Dawn Constable (nee Adams): Attendance 1963-1969

GB: School dinner ladies were quite mean then, they used to make you sit until you eat all your dinner up.
NV: I got actually kicked out of school dinners in the Infants part of the school – they forced me to eat a hard-boiled egg, which I hated.
GB: They used to force you to finish your dinner. I didn’t eat much so I used to sit there in tears. Those are probably my only bad memories of this school.

Gail Buckle and Nick Vivaldi: Attendance 1970s

It’s amazing how you remember these school dinners – marble cake an’ rice pudding with rosehip syrup.

Neil Rogers: Attendance 1974-1978

I’ve still got a really soft spot for cabbage chopped up really small and over-boiled, I really like that, and Spam fritters we used to get but they were really the only thing I couldn’t eat, they were unbelievably greasy and indescribably appalling. I think I was packed lunch for a year, I think I insisted on it ’cause packed lunches were cooler…

Daniel Hill: Attendance 1977-1984

School dinners – too many chips and baked beans and things, so I wasn’t allowed to have them for very long. But I was allowed to have the Christmas roast dinner. And I remember there was a time when we were all sitting round and I threw some carrot at my friend Stephen as he was leaving, and the dinner lady said ‘Who threw…’ and it hit the dinner lady by mistake! And she turned round and she said, ‘Who was that?’ And for some reason, I thought that if I said to her that it was Stephen who did it, it would all be OK because he was outside already and he wouldn’t get into trouble… but he got called back in and he had to stay an extra ten minutes!

Joe Tunmer: Attendance 1981-1989

14 Health & Welfare

The doctor used to come about once a year. He didn’t see everybody, you had to be called in and one of your parents had to be there and they would ask the parents lots of questions – never the girls – always the parents! If you were ill in school then they would either send one of the older girls or one of the teachers to take you home, because people didn’t have telephones in those days, so they couldn’t phone.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

If you had an illness, the School Board, well, they called him the School Board Man, he came round, I can see him now with a trilby hat and he knocked on the door for Mum …’Why wasn’t he at school?’ There was no such thing as playing truant.

George Pope: Attendance 1929-1937

We used to have a man, if we were off sick for any time, I think he was called the School Board Man. He used to come round to see why we weren’t at school. He was very nice, when he came — he was a little man as far as I can recall, very slim and balding, so he must have been getting on a bit!

Joyce Campbell (nee Farley): Attendance 1933-1938

A young lad by the name of Joey Martin, who was in the Junior School, he caught diphtheria and died; I think he must only have been around ten or eleven. Another lad in the Senior School in my class by the name of John Reed, his mother was working in a laundry in Brighton and she caught the smallpox and she died; so that left John without a mother; he was around about twelve or thirteen at that stage.

Roy Page: Attendance 1943-1951

I had rheumatic fever twice while I was at school, which resulted in me having two long periods off school. I really don’t think that in the way that children now are helped and encouraged to continue with their school work and everything, I don’t think there was one element of that and as a result, when I left school I left without any qualifications. I remember the terror of coming back to school and trying to catch up and finding that I was out of my depth academically, at that time.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

I suffered from bronchitis a great deal as a child, and was frequently absent from school as a result. After we had taken our eleven plus exams, I was unfortunate enough to contract whooping cough and was away from school for eight weeks. When I returned, I learned that I had passed my exam, but that it had been decided that it would be unwise to allow me to attend one of the local grammar schools, as a result of my delicate health. I was deeply disappointed, especially as a large percentage of my classmates were going. Miss Edgell was aware of how disappointed I was, and, without the knowledge of either my parents or myself, arranged for me to have a special medical examination. The medical officer pronounced me as fit enough to attend grammar school, and so, at the eleventh hour, approximately a week before I left St Luke’s, I was offered a place at Westlain Grammar School, which was later to become Falmer High School. I will always feel deeply indebted to Miss Edgell.

June Helyer (nee Bampton): Attendance 1957-1961

I remember being very ill once, I think I’d contracted jaundice. I think I was in the end classroom and I had to be sick and of course it wasn’t the done thing to go in the girls’ toilets, so I had to run the whole of the corridor to get to the Boys! I made it but only just! I was taken home for two weeks… I was really quite ill.

Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962

Most of the boys used to have a patch sewn in the backside of their trousers and I used to get my mother to sew me a patch in the back of my trousers. ‘Why do you want that for?’ And I says, ‘so I’m like my other mates.’ Another thing, you used to get boys coming to school with their dad’s trousers cut down. They used to be floppy, the backsides hanging down.

Pete Pullinger: Attendance 1933-1938

When we talk about them days, there’s not many people had shoes. It was all boots for the boys, or wellingtons. Nobody had a great deal of money in them days.

Bob Pullen: Attendance 1938-1949

Another recollection I have is the boys coming to school with chilblains on their hands and they used to be dabbed with tincture of violet, I believe. So you had some very nasty hands being shown at the desks – you don’t see that so much in the schools now, I think – circulation has improved drastically.

Stanley Ford: Attendance 1939-1941

Everybody was the same – it didn’t matter if you were council or what – we had no pressure on us to have anything at all. We were never ever aware of any class differences. I suppose perhaps you were aware as you got older, or more aware, that other people had far more advantages than we had, but then we were fortunate enough to have a fairly rounded education and that’s that.

Doreen Broomfield: Attendance 1943-1950

You didn’t have the problem with clothing where everybody had to have the latest thing and that sort of thing as you do now, everybody had basic things and that was more or less it.

Brian Ravenett: Attendance 1949-1950

It was hard for us at school – it was a chore going. We come from a big family and it was looking for that day when you can leave and get out and earn a few pounds. My biggest worry about coming to school, without putting too fine a point on it, was the hole in the shoe and the no underpants I had when I took my trousers off to change for sports and things like that – the embarrassment.

We had hand-me-downs, and my father used to stay up last to mend all the shoes, and quite often he’d leave a nail sticking up and it’d cripple you! As a child you wouldn’t realise what it was until you took your shoe off. We were eleven children in the family.

Tom Taylor: Attendance 1946-1950

I remember a lot of children looking very poor, though it never really meant anything much to me then, when I look back on it now it does. I can remember children literally coming to school virtually shoeless and looking very poor and unwashed and that sort of thing. Some of the children did come from some very poor backgrounds. They weren’t always the best washed and sometimes it was a bit of a fight to not sit next to someone like that – you know how cruel children can be.

John Washington: Attendance 1949-1955

I’ve still got a scar on my finger that was from a gate in Queen’s Park Rise, a ball went in there and I went in and somebody came behind and the gate went on my finger and the teachers they dressed it for me — there was no nurse.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

There were no houses at Whitehawk Bottom then and there was an old farm called Bates’s. What I remember most was, we had two brothers named Jupp who went to St Luke’s, the youngest one was playing round by the farm and the wall collapsed on top of him and killed him.

Fred Hogbin: Attendance 1930-1933

In a woodwork lesson with Mr Anderson there was an accident. A chap called Billy Hagen was on the end of the bench and the idea was to keep you away from one another. Billy Hagen, he was tall like me, and a boy named Bridle, who was a very small boy. Unfortunately Bridle moved from his end and Billy Hagen turned round with a chisel and it went right through Bridle’s cheek.

Brian Bergin: Attendance 1937-1948

You didn’t make much then [in woodwork] because you didn’t have the tools — we used to do joints, you know, mortice. Teachers came and then we’d have another one — I think it was all to do with the war. We had an old boy that got hit on the head by one of the lads with a mallet and he went off on a stretcher and we never did see him again… we didn’t have woodwork for a little while.

Ernie Pattenden: Attendance 1941-1944

I was in the playground and I used to bring sandwiches — because I didn’t eat much breakfast
— and I was tucking in and put a wasp into my mouth on the sandwich! Of course, it just made me scream to feel this pain on my tongue. The teachers were very worried because although I didn’t know it at the time, what can happen is that the tongue can swell and fall down the back of the throat. They rushed me home to my mother no telephones in those days, they just took me straight round. Fortunately, she was there. Then they said, ‘Well, I don’t think it could have been a complete sting, she must have got rid of it before it could pump all the poison in, or it would have swollen up by now.’ So I was lucky but it was panic stations for the teachers!

Enid Bywater-Lees (nee Doherty): Attendance 1938-1944

When I was in the Infants there was a boy in my class called Roy Dawtrey who was quite small. There was a really massive wind came up one day — it was a real gale and I can remember him being blown across the playground and he was taken up with cuts and grazes. It was a very, very strong windy day!

Brenda Street: Attendance 1939-1946

I remember an ambulance once, and I think this may be in my head, but I seem to remember the ambulance man walking out holding an arm!

Ray Fowler: Attendance 1953-1959

We had the lady who checked to see if we’d got any livestock in the hair, with a little wooden spoon. And the dental inspector came round and inspected your teeth.

George Pope: Attendance 1929-1937

We used to call the woman ‘Nitty Nora’. She’d come round and you’d go in one by one and she had a long stick, as if to say ‘don’t come near me’ and she’d go like that, [reluctantly separating hair with stick] look at your head and look at your hair from about two foot away. ‘Go on, off you go,’ she used to say.

Edward Humphrey: Attendance 1930-1939

We had a nurse visiting every three to six months she used to come round checking. If they did find any in the Senior Boys they used to shave the boys heads right off and just leave a little bit in the front, just a little tiny bit in the front.

Bob Pullen: Attendance 1938-1949

JE: There were two little girls in our class who were never very clean and my mother said to me, ‘Whatever you do don’t sit next to those two little girls otherwise you’ll come home with nits.’ And sure enough I went home with nits! My mother used to get a piece of brown newspaper and comb my hair onto the newspaper to see the nits.
JS: I remember distinctly girls coming to school with very, very short chopped off hair and you always knew why.
YB: The thing was called quassia chips, you bought it from the chemist and you put boiling water on it. It was like sort of wood chippings that I can remember of it and then it was combed through your hair….
JE: The school nurse used to come.
JS: The nit nurse used to come round.
YB: We used to call her Nitty Nora!
JE: Yeah, Nitty Nora. She used to look at your fingers so you used to have to hold your hands out to her, I never knew whether she looked to see whether you were biting your fingernails or to see whether she could detect anything wrong with your general health by what your nails looked like, whether you were deficient in some vitamin or something. She used to come with like a knitting needle and lift your hair up and look all through it for nits.

Jean Eatwell: Attendance 1941-1947
Jean Stedman: Attendance 1940-1944 & Yvonne Banks: Attendance 1936-1940s

The dreaded school nurse – she was always there with the horrible smelly yellow stuff slapped on your knees when you grazed them in the playground saying, ‘This won’t hurt.’ Arrgh! Slapping it straight on. Quite fearsome from what I remember. Used to search your hair with a nit comb and then some poor children had to have their heads shaved where they had nits so bad. Poor old nurse she used to be called ‘Nitty Nora’.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

Mr Watters, he was the physical training man, a Scotsman, he used to give us, once every so many months, PT instruction. I remember once in the Hall, we were doing PT and two of the chaps stood back to back and then the other one comes and walks over. As I came over, the chap on one side, he let his arm go down and down I went. I broke my left arm and ended up in the hospital!

George Pope: Attendance 1929-1937

This gentleman he used to go round and pick you out if your deportment wasn’t right. And he picked me out and I had to do exercises and hold onto the door, you know the big door. They thought I was going to have something wrong with my spine, ’cause you can get curvature of the spine when you’re about eleven, and they picked it up. I used to have to do these exercises holding onto the door and letting my feet hang and stretch me out because my deportment wasn’t very good!

Yvonne Banks: Attendance 1936-1940s

There used to be a man that used to come to the school to inspect our PE. I can see him now, a little short chap with a brown suit, he looked as though he’d been in the army, with really highly polished brown shoes. And he used to have a stick with him, a cane. He used to walk around the balcony in the Hall. He used to walk around kicking his steel tips — I can remember it as if it was yesterday. His steel tips on the end of the heels on his shoes.

Jean Stedman: Attendance 1941-1947

15 World War II

I can remember one of my teachers, he forecast the War coming, you know, Mr Godfree. And we were sitting in the classroom one day and he said if there was another war, it would be owing to the port of Danzig in Poland, the Germans would want to take it, you see. And of course, that’s where the War started from.

George Pope: Attendance 1929-1937

In 1938 or ’39 when they moved in to dig them air raid shelters in the playground. Are they still there, d’you know — those underground shelters? That was an excitement then to see these great big holes zigzagged in the ground. It was all false alarms in them days, but you all had to troop down and into them, same way you used to come to school, ‘Keep to the left.’ They were put all over the playground and I think they’re still there ’cause I’ve seen one or two things there for two escape tunnels.

Edward Humphrey: Attendance 1930-1939

The air raid shelters were actually in the playground — underneath the playground. They actually dug trenches out in a zigzag fashion and put concrete beams on the top and then tarmacked over… so, unless it was from a direct hit, you were fairly safe. They even had felt which used to roll down on the inside/outside of the actual doors, which was sort of like a gas trap to stop gas from dropping down the steps into the shelter, so you were reasonably safe from a gas attack.

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

During an air raid, the pips went first and we were given the orders to dive underneath the plank seat. Well, this friend of mine, we did this, and then the bombs dropped and my friend started to cry, and to try and comfort him, I said to him ‘If your lot goes, my lot’ll go too.’ When we were in the playground afterwards, this boy called him a cry-baby and kept on and on at him. Well, I was a reasonably peaceful person, but if anybody needed sorting I would sort them, and so I did, and he regretted the things he said.

Brian Bergin: Attendance 1937-1948

My most vivid memory of this school is running across the playground, going down into the shelters, and that is so vivid. Frightened, all in line, going down below underneath and having our lessons in the shelter.

Eileen Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s

They were very disruptive to start with [the air raids] because the whole class used to go down to the shelter with the teacher and there wasn’t an awful lot one could do there. The shelter was supplied with comics and Enid Blyton sort of stories and people used to sit and read them and that was it. It was very narrow. I suppose the shelter would be about six feet wide at the maximum and you were sitting along one side on slatted wooden benches. If the teacher was at one end trying to actually give a lesson, the people at the other end could never hear! And those round the corner, because they had the zigzag for blast problems — blasts could take out a section but couldn’t go round a corner — so people sitting round the corner of the zigzag couldn’t even see the teacher let alone hear… so that would be difficult. But then we would only go to the shelter when it was absolutely essential.

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

I remember the shelters under the playground and the narrow tunnels and sitting side by side on these long benches and we had to practice going up this steep ladder through the emergency exit.

Enid Bywater-Lees (nee Doherty): Attendance 1938-1944

If we were in school and the air raids went, we had to stand up and walk very quickly in single file out to the playground, down into the shelters. And we used to have beanbags to play with – we used to throw them and sing songs and everything and, all in all, you know, we weren’t really aware how serious it was.

Brenda Street: Attendance 1939-1946

The lessons were always being interrupted. Maybe we looked forward to the interruptions, I don’t know — with the sirens. I think they used to have another red alert or something come on at some stage or the other… it was quite an adventure going down into these shelters and just sitting on these wooden benches and whiling the time away.

Stanley Ford: Attendance 1939-1941

You could come to school at nine o’clock and be half way through assembly and the sirens would go and off we went down the shelters and you just didn’t know how long you were going to be in there. Could be all morning but it wasn’t always, you know but it was just the aeroplanes flying over so probably three-quarters of an hour, something like that, then of course it took you a bit of time to settle down. We didn’t understand it really… It was a bit of fun really, the teachers were excellent, you know, and they were all fairly old. It was not until I got into the Seniors when the younger teachers were coming back from the army.

John Rolfe: Attendance 1940-1950

If the sirens went during the War, we were supposed to go back home. If we were near to school, we’d go into the playground or into the shelters. The shelters were a bit musty…We spent a lot of the time in the shelters, I think.

Dennis Piercey: Attendance 1940-1944

I do remember going down [the air raid shelter] at least once… Dark and smelly and it just went through from one sort of entrance to another – just like a tunnel, really. Think we just stood down there, but there might have been benches.

Wendy Tribe: Attendance 1940s

If we were in school and the air raids went, we had to stand up and walk very quickly in single file out to the playground, down into the shelters. And we used to have beanbags to play with – we used to throw them and sing songs and everything and, all in all, you know, we weren’t really aware how serious it was.

Brenda Street: Attendance 1939-1946

Seems we had a good time, really… judging from what my wife says, we had a different war to her! I don’t think half the time we were aware there was a war on. We used to go in the air raid shelters here and that seemed to be great fun at the time… There were half a dozen of us who were a bit of a swine, ‘cos we used to run straight through them [the air raid shelters] and out the other side. But we got caught out and got warned about it! We used to do our gas mask drill and all that sort of thing. Then they started doing lessons down there at one time. I know we thought we’d get away with it when the sirens went but then they started to do the lessons down there.

Ernie Pattenden: Attendance 1941-1944

It was cold [in the air raid shelters] it was bitterly cold but then the school was bitterly cold… in the winters it was unbelievably cold. It must have been fairly dark and the teachers would say, ‘Be quiet’ but I think we were most of the time. I don’t remember anyone crying… we just knew we had to go down there.

Gwen Cole: Attendance 1942-1949

Everybody had to carry a gas mask to school. I know it was in a round cream tin. It had a blind cord arrangement and you could put it over your head and sort of sling it over your back and then pass it through your cord and wear it like a hump on your back!

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

My gas mask was in a yellow round tin and I used to consistently hit it on the wall, so it was always full of dents! But, of course, every day you went to school you had your gas mask with you and when you came home you had your gas mask with you. I suppose, in the forefront of your mind are those war years because they were quite frightening.

Basil Mansfield: Attendance 1940s

When the evacuees came to Brighton on a Sunday there was loads of them came down and I remember my parents opened the shop to give the teachers and the helpers cups of tea. There were all these children looking very lost you know, with their little cases and little labels on them… They were sorting them out and taking them to the different houses.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

We volunteered to take two evacuees. We lived in Bentham Road, just around the corner off Queen’s Park Road. I well remember the London children being paraded up and down in their dozens. I was standing on the steps of our house with my parents and watching the children being allocated. They disappeared into the houses as they came down. They too had their gas mask boxes around them, their various briefcases, suitcases and carrier bags, but by the time they reached the half-way of our side of the street, all the children had been billeted so, in the event, we didn’t have any. Such was the War, that two years later I had the evacuation chits, which were issued to us to go to Yorkshire in 1942.

Keith Bergin: Attendance 1936-1940

When the children came down from London in the early days of the War, it meant a sharing of classroom space. One week we would go to school in the mornings and the next week in the afternoon, and so on. Resulting from this confusion many weeks of no schooling was the order of the day. Looking back it was a wonder that I was able to learn anything.

Gordon Mills: Attendance 1932-1942

I believe that our schooling was interrupted to the extent that we did half days and the evacuees did the other half days so that the principle would have been the survival of each existing school and that there was no need for the children to co-habit.

Keith Bergin: Attendance 1936-1940

We only went to school for half a day, as there were not enough teachers for us all. We did not have much art, as paper and paint was scarce — I seem to remember we had chalk, white only, and pieces of thick black paper, which was the sort used to pin up over windows in the ‘blackout’.

June Marshall (nee Pierce): Attendance 1936-1942

They split it that half the school came in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. So that if the school ever got hit, all the pupils never got clobbered. The only trouble with that was that I accidentally played truant because I forgot! We’d had the school holidays and I’d forgotten whether we were due to start back in the mornings or the afternoons. And I was fishing in Queen’s Park pond, (you were allowed to do that in those days, during the War) and I was thinking where is everybody — Old Jeffrey Ricketts should be here with his rod — where on earth is he? And of course I discovered that I should have been at school!

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

I can remember we had to share the school. We had a London school that used to come in the afternoon. We used to come from 8am ’til 1 pm and the London school would come from 1 pm to 5pm or 6, then we swapped over.

Barbara Walker: Attendance 1940-1945

To be honest, we didn’t go to school, really. Because you went mornings one week and afternoons the next so that the school was never full, so that should there be a bombing or anything…

John Rolfe: Attendance 1940-1950

We did go to Park Street [School] for a while from here… I don’t know if it were the bombing but we spent about nine months down at Park Street — I don’t know why, really, but that’s where we had to go.

Ernie Pattenden: Attendance 1941-1944

I was coming out of the main school entrance here, going along the terrace, going home for lunch when I heard the sound of a single engine fighter. It didn’t sound English, so I looked up and lo and behold it was an ME 109 coming along hell for leather with a pilot, who was looking back over his shoulder and he had a face as white as a sheet. And I thought — what’s he looking over his shoulder for? And behind him there was a Spitfire screaming along after him! So I did no more than climb the railings by the gate and wave my cap in the air and the pilot of the Spitfire actually waved back! And that was amazing! One of the teachers saw me up the railings waving my cap at this Spitfire and of course she says, ‘Get down on the floor — you’ll get killed!’ Well, being a school lad and very keen on aircraft in those days, I thought what the hell is she talking about, because I didn’t know of an aircraft that could fire backwards — so I sort of ignored her… After everything had gone, we laid down on the floor. It was really quite fun, I was really quite excited.

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

We used to go home at lunchtime and we were just going out of the door, as juniors, and we heard this machine-gunning above our heads and there was this German plane, I don’t know what type, roaring very low over our heads, quite clear, very low. And of course we’d been taught we had to throw ourselves on the ground, which we all did, and another plane, something like a Spitfire, was actually chasing it and of course, that was the machine-gunning – at each other, I think. They weren’t really attacking us, but that’s what we felt was happening and we got up and ran home, didn’t run back into school, ran home and met my mother half-way, all worried, coming up to meet me. She took me home and I don’t know, you just got on again, then… It was just one of those things that we lived with, I suppose, at that age.

Enid Bywater-Lees (nee Doherty): Attendance 1938-1944

The only time it hit you was when I see a Messerschmidt being chased by a Spitfire and realised that was a bit terrifying – you could see it being chased out to sea over the top… You could see the pilot – right over the top of Toronto Terrace – that was a bit frightening. We did get machine-gunned by the swimming pool, whether they were machine gunning us… But we had to lie flat, dive down outside the swimming pool down by the woodwork class there. I think they were just lightening their loads before they went across the sea. That’s what we were told.

Ernie Pattenden: Attendance 1941-1944

The thing that sticks in the forefront of my mind was getting down St Luke’s Road and hearing the machine guns and hiding in a doorway of a house – then watching this German plane that flew over, so very, very low, followed by a Hurricane that was firing at it – machine-gunning. I was in a doorway and it was a marvellous sight but still scary. This was at lunchtime.

Basil Mansfield: Attendance 1940s

The aeroplanes used to come from London having been on a bombing raid. If they had anything left, they just dropped it at random as they came across, it didn’t matter if it was a school or what it was. I can remember being machine-gunned on the way home from school one day; I can, up the road here in Glynde Road. There was a man happened to be there and there were three or four of us kids and he got us to lay down – not that it would have done anything I suppose really — but we laid in the front gardens under the hedges, you know, places that they couldn’t see us.

John Rolfe: Attendance 1940-1950

We were actually machine-gunned once from a low aircraft, coming on our way back from school and we had to fly into the nearest shop. It was at the top of Southover Street and we had to lie flat on the floor. My mother said something about the planes as they came over would be dropping their last loads when they got to the Channel.

Pamela Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s

MP: I was at school with your brother, Billy
JE: Yes.
MP: I was in the same class, he got killed in 1943, didn’t he?
JE: Yes, he did.
MP: Mmm, on my birthday.
MP & JE: 25th of May 1943.
MP: We went home from school and there was an air raid, in the lunchtime, and Jean’s brother, Billy and another boy called David Bell were killed. JE: That’s right.
MP: … and when we came back after lunchtime we were told, you know these kiddies had been killed and we carried on with our lessons. There wasn’t any counselling or…
JE: No.
MP: … anything, we just carried on as normal
JE:. Mmm, it’s absolutely right. He had called into the shop.
MP: He was in the sweetshop…
JE: He called in to the sweetshop to pick up some cardboard to bring back to school in the afternoon because everybody was collecting cardboard for the war effort, and some bombs had fallen. We lived in Hallett Road. We walked to the top of our road and we could look across Brighton. We heard that there were some bombs dropped on Brighton railway station and my grandparents lived near the railway station, so we saw all the smoke and we were very concerned about them, and then suddenly we heard that a bomb had dropped on the shops. My mum said, ‘Aahhh – Billy’s at the shops.’ And it was terrible. My father was in the Air Force at the time and my sister was three months old and my brother was four years older than I am, it was absolutely horrific, you know. My father had to come home from the Air Force on compassionate leave and Miss Baujard, who was my brother’s teacher at the time, well, she was absolutely brilliant, she was almost living in our house at that time you know, she was absolutely brilliant.

Marion Plank: Attendance 1939-1945 and Jean Eatwell: Attendance 1941-1947

I remember that air raid distinctly, we were just going home at lunchtime and my grandmother was running down the road to meet me with my little sister. There was a lot of feeling at the time amongst people that they must have probably been aiming at this school. It’s the only big building in this area and there was no other big building that they could possibly have been aiming at and that was the thought, that this had really been the target. Obviously, they’d got bombs to jettison on their way back home.

Jean Stedman: Attendance 1940-1944

I ran home and I was greeted by my mother and we had in the house one of these iron air raid shelters. And she immediately pushed me under the shelter because the siren had gone on my way home, and of course you heard the planes. There were these two enormous explosions, that actually hurt your ears, and I lived in Brading Road then. I remember going back to school after the ‘all clear’ and walking along Queen’s Park Road and going up Down Terrace – which is where I always went to go to school – and seeing the shops, which were all rubble and seeing people digging, literally pulling stones away and debris and bricks and what have you. And the following morning I remember being told that David Bell and the other boy, named Eatwell (I forget his christian name) instead of going straight home, had gone in the shops to get some sweets and the shops got a direct hit. That stands out in my mind…and being a choirboy and David Bell was a choirboy at St Luke’s, I remember having to go to the funeral.

Basil Mansfield: Attendance 1940s

I do remember clearly one of the raids on 25th of May 1943, because I’d just come out of school to go home for lunch and the air-raid siren went, so I ran like billy-ho down the road. Just as I got to Albion Road the pips went which meant ‘raid imminent’, and there was this terrible noise and I saw these planes go overhead and they were making a hell of a din. My mother was on the bus – a trolley bus – and there were drivers and conductors then, and the conductor made her throw herself on the floor of the bus and wouldn’t let her get off. I’d hared down the road into my house, because we didn’t lock the doors then, and we had a table shelter, and I scrambled
underneath. My sister came running down the road and William Peters, the coal merchant, grabbed her and pulled her under the counter. Afterwards we just had our lunch and came back to school, but on the way back to school, as I came up the Terrace it was really quiet and I thought ‘Oh crikey, I’m late.’ There was no noise of children playing, so I ran like mad. They were all standing in the playground, very quiet and then I heard when I got back that two of the children had been killed. One of them was a little boy in my class called David Bell – he was eight – and the other one was Billy Eatwell – he was a bit older – and a bomb had dropped on a shop in Down Terrace and they’d both been killed, and you know it’s quite strange but we just carried on as normal.

Brenda Street: Attendance 1939-1946

Children being children, war didn’t mean an awful lot to us. I can’t honestly say that many of us appreciated what the War was all about…it wasn’t until much later, when a couple of children who were buying sweets – they were in a sweetshop a couple streets up from here. A bomb was dropped and these two children were actually killed I know that one chap’s name was Billy Eatwell, I remember that. He was killed in the sweetshop of all the places.

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

Barbara [Walker] and I had a boy in our class who was killed in the war, which was quite a sad thing at the time. I think it was the day when the planes bombed, when the planes were firing, and the children thought it was at them, a shop was hit in Down Terrace and the boy was killed in the air raid.

Barbara Wood: Attendance 1940-1945

They did blow up Down Terrace, the shops there. We’d gone home to dinner and the bomb dropped there and the butcher’s shop, he used to be a great friend of mine – he put his wife in the fridge and he got blown to bits – that’s all that was left, the fridge. We could never understand why he didn’t go in there with her. That was the only one bad bit of the War I can remember. I only lived in Toronto Terrace and when that bomb dropped we were at home. There was loads of mess but no damage here [St Luke’s] ’cause I know we had to come back here, after lunch.

Ernie Pattenden: Attendance 1941-1944

I do vaguely remember the day that the bomb fell on Down Terrace and I think it was the butcher’s shop that was hit – some pupils lived in that area.

Gwen Cole: Attendance 1942-1949

We used to have a system of air raid warning, which was the old wailing ‘moaning minny’ then we used to have a series of pips. We never used to go down to the shelter when moaning minny used to go, if we had the time, we’d go down after the pips, because the pips meant they were imminent. Otherwise you’d sit there twiddling your thumbs and they probably wouldn’t come at all. I think this particular time we never even got to the shelters but there was a hell of a crash and they’d bombed the school clinic in Morley Street; the thing was bombed absolutely flat. I can remember coming out of school and walking down the middle of Queen’s Park Road and thinking that shrapnel could have come up from Morley Street and landed in Queen’s Park Road. And there was some; a small piece of bomb casing which I managed to find. I had that for years!

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

There was a big raid and we didn’t get out of the classroom in time — we had to throw ourselves on the ground — I think that was in Miss Baldwin’s class. When we did actually file into the playground, there was this massive pall of smoke going up into the sky, and I looked and it came from the lower end of Queen’s Park Road. After school when I went home I thought, ‘What am I going to find?’ because you never knew — but my house was fine, but Grosvenor Street round the corner had been bombed and I think about 22 people were killed that day.

Brenda Street: Attendance 1939-1946

Going back to the War, I can remember when I was in the Seniors, we had a special assembly to see a banana. A boy by the name of Micky Morgan had a banana and we had an assembly in the Senior Boys just to look at a banana!

Bob Pullen: Attendance 1938-1949

A little girl came to school one day with a banana. We hadn’t had bananas for ages and we were astounded. Her father had come home from abroad and he bought some, so she cut it all up into slices but there wasn’t enough to go round, so I had a piece of the skin and it was lovely just to smell this banana — I’ve never forgotten that!

Brenda Street: Attendance 1939-1946

I had a relation who worked down in Lavender Street, down off St James’s Street there, and they were wholesalers for fruit and veg. We went back to the depot and the lads were talking and they said, ‘They’re here!’ They were bananas. That was the first banana I had ever seen!

Roy Page: Attendance 1943-1951

We had a bit of luck, it was coming towards the end of the War, and suddenly one of our teachers, he came to us and he said, ‘Got some good news for you, for the whole school,’ he said, ‘the Canadians are sending some drinking chocolate over’ And I couldn’t remember really what drinking chocolate was, and he said ‘so bring a container and we’ll fill it up’ and he said, ‘there’s plenty of it, so long as you don’t overdo it’, and I remember one boy and he brought this enormous great bucket! When Mr Sharman saw it he said, ‘What the devil you got there?! Tell you what, you go home, get yourself a decent-sized container, bring it back here and we’ll see what we can do.’ He took it back home and he said, ‘My mum wasn’t half wild’ – because he couldn’t fill this bucket!

Derek Leney: Attendance 1942-1945

When we were here we were allowed to bring in a tin for chocolate powder. I believe it was American and you could take it home and some people would bring a normal sized tin and others a huge tin! You could make a chocolate drink or my mum would make a chocolate cake.

Doreen Broomfield: Attendance 1943-50

Now it was either just after the War or just before it ended, the Americans sent us over chocolate powder, you know what you make cups of chocolate with, an’ we all had to bring in a baby food tin to put it in. Now where my mum got that from I don’t know ‘cos we had no babies! But I turned up with me tin and you were told on no account to open the tin ’til you got home… Well, I’m sure we all went home with chocolate mouths!

Wendy Tribe: Attendance 1940s

Well, I suppose being a bit of a greedy child and not ever having sweets during the War, when the Canadian soldiers brought in chocolate powder, we were told to bring jam jars to school and we all got a jam jar full of milk chocolate powder – I have to say mine was half empty by the time I got home!

Julie Cherriman: Attendance 1946-1948

Sweets were rationed; I think we were allowed two ounces of sweets a week, and that wasn’t much, so a lot of the lads from St Luke’s – they used to run errands for people down the road, and the people gave them their sweet rations. There was clothes rationing. Clothes rationing started in 1941, I think, and I remember my mother once bought me a lumber jacket from the Co-op in London Road. It was a smashing lumber jacket, but my God the smell! We put it in the bath, we soaked it, she hung it outside for three days, and after three days it was still smelling, but I wore it anyway! And I came up here to St Luke’s and the kids said ‘Phew-what have you got on?’ And I never wore it again, not up here.

Brian Bergin: Attendance 1937-1948

We used to go over that little shop on the corner, the bloke there, he was an ex- policeman and he was about six-foot-five, absolutely enormous and we used to call him ‘Tiny’. An enormous great man. And they used to sell things like lemonade powder and ’cause there were no sweets, bottles of coloured water. It was foul, penny a bottle, you know. And being wartime, that’s how it was, we didn’t get sweets or anything like that. Didn’t do us any harm, still got my teeth!

John Rolfe: Attendance 1940-1950

Kids used to come to school with all sorts of things. One of the big things was bread and sugar and bread and condensed milk, and that was quite often their sole lunch diet because there was very little food about then. We had a sort of school dinner, it wasn’t that good because, as I say there just wasn’t the food available. I remember at Christmas time we heard of someone who had a chicken for Christmas and thought, my word, he’s got some money, ‘cos obviously it came on the black market. You could buy anything on the black market if you wanted to pay the price. But us, for Christmas dinner for about three years we had rabbit which we reared ourselves, and that was it..

Derek Leney: Attendance 1942-1945

Dunkirk was taking place then, and I remember one or two of the lads from St Luke’s, we got together, and a lot of these men came back and they were hurt and they went to the Brighton General Hospital. And we got together and went round the streets collecting knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, and what have you, and then we sold it. And with the money we received we bought cigarettes for the troops that came home safe from Dunkirk up at the hospital and they used to play with us, jigsaw puzzles and board games and we enjoyed it.

Brian Bergin: Attendance 1937-1948

Several of the kiddies used to come to school and say, ‘My dad’s not coming home again. He’s been killed.’ It’s one of those things that kiddies sort of used to accept. When you got to a little older, around about 16, you’d think ‘Gosh, so and so’s dead…I’ll never see him again.’ But when you’re younger you didn’t really think that way … well, to me, war was, ‘well so — it’s a war’. It was just a part of another thing.

I can remember [VE day] in May. It was a lovely beautiful May day, quiet, sunny, gorgeous. And I can remember us all trouping off, my mother and myself and the lady who lived upstairs, we went to the church, at St Peter’s, it was great, just to go into the church and give thanks.

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

When the War finished here, we had a massive great party — well, I say a party but it was like a concert put on for the parents, and they all came along and we sang songs and recited plays and God knows what. They seemed to enjoy it. But I think really it was the fact that the War had ended and they’d put up with enough, and suddenly it was all finished and the parents came into the school. There was something different about it. They all seemed to be totally relieved, perhaps because the mothers’ husbands were coming home, you know, and that sort of thing. I remember once there was one fella came off the ship at Southampton, came straight down to here on a truck, straight to school — he’d still got his kit bag and everything else — he came here because he wanted to see his son. He hadn’t seen him for several years.

Derek Leney: Attendance 1942-1945

6 Special Occasions

We did have one famous guest come here and I can remember that as though it was yesterday, that was Amy Johnson. Yeah, she came here to the school. And we was all in the playground and we had to sing ‘Amy, wonderful Amy. We’re proud of the way you flew.’ We all formed up out there and she came with the Mayor in his car or something like that. She came with a ‘Amy, wonderful Amy. We’re proud of the way you flew.’ I can’t get over that one.

Leonard Frost: Attendance 1925-1935

Amy Johnson had flown, I think solo, to Australia — the first woman to do it — and she made a tour of one or two schools, and she came to our school. My experience of it was that we were lined up in the playground with little Union Jack flags, and she walked among us and we sort of cheered her and so on.

John Bower: Attendance 1920s

We formed a diagonal line across the playground and we were all given little paper Union Jacks and when Amy Johnson came we had to wave them. We thought she was incredible — an open aircraft, one engine and no navigation to do all that.

Dorothy Jupp: Attendance 1928-1932

I think it was in 1930 but I can’t be dead sure of this, when Amy Johnson came round the school after her round the world flight. We all assembled in the Junior School playground and we learned the song ‘Amy, wonderful Amy’ and we all sang that to her as she came round.

Fred Farley: Attendance 1928-1935

The flyer, Amy Johnson, after she did that flight to Australia solo in the little tiny gypsy moth aeroplane it was, which I’ve seen in the Science Museum, she paid the Juniors a visit. We lined up and formed a corridor for her to walk up, and she walked up with the Headmistress, and even at that time I was thrilled. She didn’t look anything daring, you know, she didn’t look a daredevil, she just looked ordinary — could have been a schoolteacher or an office worker and she just walked up and smiled at people. I was thrilled and I’ve never forgotten it.

Fred Trott: Attendance 1929-1932

We all had to assemble in the playground to see Amy Johnson the famous woman pilot who came in the latest fashion dress, which I thought had rags hanging from the skirt hem!

Owen Gurton: Attendance 1932

In the Junior School when it was Empire Day — when we remembered the Empire — we used to walk round the playground carrying a flag, a Union flag.

Kathleen Back: Attendance 1908-1915

On Armistice Day we had a service in the Hall and on the balcony was the teachers and Headmaster. And Tozer, he was captain of the school, he used to say what they said every Armistice Day, you know: ‘We that grow old shall never not grow old’, that. We used to recite that poem. The captain of the school used to do it every year, and we used to sing ‘Oh God our help in ages past’.

Leonard Frost: Attendance 1925-1935

I do remember the Silver Jubilee when we had quite a do and a party — and then we were all given a large Jubilee mug filled with sweets. That was 1935, that was just before I left in July.

Fred Farley: Attendance 1928-1935

I do remember getting a sort of a coronation beaker type thing. God knows where it is now. I remember it was blue and it had the crest, you know the Royal Crest, on it. I thought my mum kept her teeth in it in the end!

Ray Bradford: Attendance 1952-1959

We all got a certificate from the King. It was a letter from the King on a piece of cream coloured paper with illuminated letters at the beginning, thanking us for our war effort. And it was signed George Rex, you know — obviously it was all printed but they were handed out at assembly and we all had to walk up one at a time and take this certificate and shake the Headmaster or Headmistress’s hand and I’ve still got mine. There was a hole punched in the middle and there was a piece of gold cord, so that you could hang it up on the wall.

Jean Eatwell: Attendance 1941-1947

We all got a blue beaker for the Queen’s Coronation, I remember that. I think I’ve still got mine… We must have been given a day off, ’cause we were one of the first in the street to get a television and I can remember watching it on television — unless I bunked off, I don’t know!

Brian Williams: Attendance 1950-1956

My lasting memory from 1952 was dressing up for the Coronation party. My sister and I had crepe paper dresses made by our mother — they were green and yellow layered with a posy of crepe flowers. As we left home in Queen’s Park Road it started raining and the paper started to bleed the colours down to our white socks and shoes.

Janice Burrell (nee Sargent): Attendance 1952-1960

Miss Millage, she put on a play about George Washington, which was out in the playground here…

Edna Dray: Attendance 1927-1931

We did a little play once, of Cinderella. I can’t remember whether our parents came, or whether it was just to the rest of the children, and I was the Fairy Godmother…

Enid Bywater-Lees (nee Doherty): Attendance 1938-1944

St Luke’s had a little drama club. I think you were really picked out for that – I don’t think it was your choice – you were picked to put on productions. I remember one, we had to do a project on Holland, and it was all about the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dyke so that Holland wouldn’t be flooded and then we put on a little musical, The Zeider Zee… ‘How it was to live beside the Zeider Zee’..and that went down a storm.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

We put on a musical that Mrs Taylor wrote the music to and Miss Holford did the words – it was called ‘The Stone of Oran’. It was a sort of thing about a lost heir to the throne, if I remember rightly and I was the said ‘lost heir’. That was quiet a horrific experience ‘cos I actually had to kiss a girl in the middle of that, Rachel Saunders. And I hated it – she hated it more than I did though!

Reuben Taylor: Attendance 1972-1978

My personal memories of St Luke’s Juniors are the school concerts at the end of the year. I loved the rehearsing of the songs, movement, learning lines, EVERYTHING! I remember the final year’s show of Godspell I was very emotional about it being my last show at school and got very upset when a friend didn’t allow me to borrow a coloured hairspray for a scene. I threw a tantrum and a few punches too (sorry Kelly). I hid and missed the rest of the show, fearing the telling off I was going to get, when I felt my hand throbbing — a lot. I had broken my hand in two places! What an end to the year! I had to sign people’s leavers’ books with my left hand.

Lana Jayne Dawson (nee Burrell): Attendance 1976-1984

When we were in Miss Holford’s class, we did Oliver, which I was very, very disappointed that I didn’t get the role of Oliver, because as I think I explained to Miss Holford, that my brother was called Oliver, so surely that gave me an advantage! But no, I played Mr Sowerby the undertaker, and me and Hayley Ayres, who was called Hayley Hemsley, we were Mr and Mrs Sowerby the undertakers. And we had to do some Egyptian dance for some bizarre reason that I think Miss Holford had figured out and maybe the rest of the world didn’t quite.

Joe Tunmer: Attendance 1981-1989

We had to go on the bus as we didn’t have any transport in those days and we had tea in the Star Inn at Alfriston, which was quite an exciting outing.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

Oh, Mr Piper was a favourite teacher, he lived at Bramber and we had an outing to Bramber Castle – just his class, and we went from Kemp Town Station in them days, to Brighton Station and then on to Bramber… there was a station there then. That was the only one we had… there were no school outings in them days. We were taken there only because he lived there I suppose… We did use to go to this festival of music at the Dome. I know that we were up on the balcony and we had to sing a song from Midsummer Night’s Dream…

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

I was in the country dancing team and we used to go to the Dome, well, it was for the Musical Festival and we were chosen, our team, to go to Southwick to go on the Green. As we only ever practised dancing in the Hall we had to go to Queen’s Park to practise on the grass. We went to this at Southwick and, while we were there, we were chosen by a gentleman who liked the look of us to dance at his garden party! The rest of the class were a bit envious because we were getting this time off school!

Edna Dray: Attendance 1927-1931

We had an outing on one occasion. Mr Pollard got an outing up to London. Campion’s coaches all lined up and we went to the Tower of London and the zoo. It cost us seven shillings in those days. And after it was all over, and when we got back, Mr Pollard, the teacher, said you’ve all got thruppence refund, because it only come to… That was a memorable day and he said ‘This won’t be the last one,’ but it was in my case — the first and only outing I ever had here.

George Pope: Attendance 1929-1937

School outings, they were organised, but I think we didn’t always conform or behave in quite the way that we should have done on things like that. We made life a little bit more difficult for the teachers than we should have done. I’m not sure how seriously the teachers would have seen that, but to us at the time, we were really taking them on. I remember going up on a school outing to London, when two or three of our boys had reached the boxing championship, the boys’ boxing championship final. Boxing used to be quite prolific then and Billy Crump, Brian Vinall and his brother (who was known as Skinny Vinall ) they were very good boxers. This was at the Albert Hall and this sticks out vividly in my mind because, as part of that trip, we were also taken to Lyons Corner House, where we had tea or a light meal and playing there was Ivy Benson’s All Girl Band… I think it was the first all woman band that there was.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

We did have little trips. There was an aircraft carrier, the Indefatigable, that was moored off the end of the Palace Pier and we had trips to go out to that. That must have been about ’48/49.

Roy Page: Attendance 1943-1951

We had to bring tuppence ha’penny to school in Mrs Morgan’s class, which would have been Year 4, so we could all go to the Pavilion on the bus — I remember very clearly being taken round the Royal Pavilion. I did enjoy it but didn’t go back for about another 30 years!

Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962

I remember a lovely outing we had when we were leaving school. Mr Da ffin our form teacher, he was lovely, he always put his heart and soul into everything, and he organised a trip to London Zoo. We were so excited because most of us had never been and two coaches rolled up and off we went for the whole day and it felt like we were going to the other side of the world. I remember a lot of children being sick on the coach.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

17 Hometime

My mother used to tell me not to sit on the toilet at school, so the consequence was I would run home from school and almost do it on the floor, on the entrance to the house, I couldn’t wait any longer!

Kathleen Back: Attendance 1908—1915

Normally I had to go home [after school] and help my parents in the shop.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920—1928

I lived in lslingword Place, which is the other side of Queen’s Park Road, quite close, and I had a sister who also was at the school and we had a dog called Vic. It was a faithful old animal, and at school time, when, you know, we were due to come home, my mum used to say to Vic the dog, ‘Go and fetch the children,’ and the dog would come and sit outside the school and wait for us and take us home.

Ronald Satterley: Attendance 1926-1937

Jimmy Carroll was one of my friends and we used to go home and come back together and we used to throw apple cores into people’s windows where the top window was about a few inches down.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

Every day I passed a handy sweetshop, which was on the corner of St Luke’s Road and St Luke’s Terrace. Toffee in various forms came in slabs from trays and was broken up in the shop with a small toffee hammer, then weighed using a scale with brass weights. A large assortment of sweets were sold loose from glass jars, the purchases being wrapped in plain paper twisted to form a cone — there were no bags. She also sold tin whistles, pea-shooters, potato guns, cap guns and caps, catapults, whipping tops and whips, and marbles… It was a popular shop, and I recall longingly gazing in the window every day with too little money to buy what I wanted.

Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927-1933

There used to be a little baker’s on the corner oh, yes… near the top of Southover Street on the right. We used to go in there and buy a ha’penny bun and then go round to the side and there used to be a girl in there, Queenie her name was. She used to be down in the bakery and we used to buy a cheap bun and then go round the side, pass the bun down to her. She would split it open and twist the old whatsname and fill it up with cream. We got it for the same price!

Dennis Piercey: Attendance 1940-1944

One of the lads from St Luke’s said to me one day, he said ‘Have you ever tried liquorice root?’ and I hadn’t, so we got together and went down the shops and got liquorice root, or what they called locust beans. It was a sort of flat thing about four or five inches long and in it was beans, and you ate the outside and threw the beans away, and that was nice. Sweets, if you could eat them — they were like chalk, with no taste at all, but of course we ate them. There was a sweetshop just down the bottom of the road, where the cat used to sit on the sweets, and we used to go in and say ‘Can we have a quarter of whatever it was?’ and she’d get the cat off so that she could weigh the sweets!

Derek Leney: Attendance 1942-1945

It was a close-knit community and we all walked home and the big pleasure was to go into a little confectionery shop. It was a very dark confectioner just at the top of Southover Street. My mother usually gave me a penny, and I went in and got lemonade powder…and it was put into a little cone of paper and that was my pleasure going home.

Gwen Cole: Attendance 1942-1949

EC: There was a very limited choice of sweets, wasn’t there? There wasn’t many around.
JC: Did they used to make water lollies as well? Put a bit of lemon squash or something…
EC: …on a stick, for a penny, that’s right. Traffic lights, red and green… just water with a bit of colour in on a stick.

Julie Cherriman: Attendance 1946-1948 & Elizabeth Corbett (nee Vickery): Attendance 1944-1947

I was an only child and unfortunately my mum and dad tended to think that when you finished school that was the time to come home.

Brian Ravenett: Attendance 1949-50

Miss Crowley was a rather rotund individual with a somewhat pompous manner. She was one of the few teachers in those days who owned a motor-car; hers was an Izetta three-wheel bubble car, which was something of a novelty. She used to give MrTamkin lifts home after school. The door of the car — there was only one — opened out at the front of the vehicle and they would both clamber in…the sight of these two travelling down the road in this tiny car was hilarious — it’s a wonder it never collapsed!

John Denyer: Attendance 1956-1960

There was a little corner sweetshop where everyone from St Luke’s went — a little sweetshop on Downs Terrace. If you were really well off that’s where you went for your blackjacks and your refresher lollipop or something…

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

When we finished school it was straight down the park or the Xavierian College, which they’ve knocked down now and built houses on, but it used to be like a derelict site. The kids all used to get in and throw things and stuff…and ‘dodge the parkie’ and climb the tree that used to be by the bowling green which used to be called ‘Old Knotty’. Then you’d wait until it got dark and then the bats would come out and fly around your head, and count the number of bats. I think all kids did the same things, you know, didn’t matter what year, playing kiss chase in the bushes, yep, which was good.

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-1971

NR: Remember the ice cream van that used to be outside every week…every Friday the ice cream van used to turn up and we used to pile into the old sweetshop across the road, d’you remember that?
RT: I remember the sweetshop across the road…I remember Space Dust was invented when we were at school here. And the really fun thing to do was to get somebody and sit on them and pour Space Dust into their mouths — the whole packet preferably ’cause it’s the stuff that crackles on your tongue and explodes in your mouth! And unfortunately I tended to be the person that people were sitting on pouring Space Dust into the mouth. But… it was all done in a friendly way.
NR: It wasn’t meant to hurt… it was meant to be fun.

Neil Rogers: Attendance 1974-1978 & Reuben Taylor: Attendance 1972-1978

18 The Last Word

It was a very happy place, very happy. The teachers were very kind but we did as we were told, there was discipline there.

Kathleen Back: Attendance 1908-1915

I was glad in some ways [to leave the school] and sorry because I was cutting myself off from others who had known me for years, and the teachers, but at the same time I was looking for a new life with my parents in the shop.

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920-1928

I enjoyed school, very much so. I would have like to have stayed on longer. We always thought this was the best school in Brighton.

Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-1934

It was a good school. They were good teachers. The education was there and I look back and think ‘yes, it was a very good school for knowledge’, although classrooms then were 30 people.

Basil Mansfield: Attendance 1940s

I really loved it here, I really did. Even though it was very strict, you knew where you were with the teachers. If you were naughty, you got told off. They never seemed to bear a grudge. The whistle blew and you knew you had to be in line and you’d be in line – very regimented – but everybody else was the same. And if the teacher told you to do something, then you’d do it. I loved coming to school.

Edna Dray: Attendance 1927-1931

I enjoyed my days at school. It still is a wonderful school. The best school that ever was.

Fred Tester: Attendance 1912-1922

They were, on the whole, I think, happy memories. It’s nice to come back. It still looks very similar, and I suppose the hardest thing coming into the school is orientating myself to the whole school, because when we were here the top floor was sacrosanct, because it was the Senior Boys and we were not allowed up here.

Enid Bywater-Lees (nee Doherty): Attendance 1938-1944

Schooldays, they say, are the happiest days of your life, and in fact they are, but you don’t realise it at the time.

Peter Clark: Attendance 1937-1946

I enjoyed my time at St Luke’s and it taught me a lot, not just how to box but how to live, and that stood me in good stead for later life, and a lot of us kept in touch afterwards.

Derek Leney: Attendance 1942-1945

There was a good lot of lads in the class. They were funny and we had some good times and sad times. I look back with affection on the school, very much so, because I’ve seen the results of what the school has produced in the pupils. I think it was the discipline that they taught us and manners and respect for people and people’s property. I’d bring back what we went through, the discipline in the school though it could be excessive, and in some ways we did live in fear. I wouldn’t have changed it. If I could have gone anywhere, I don’t think I would have gone anywhere but St Luke’s.

Roy Page: Attendance 1943-1951

On the last day of term we went round every classroom saying goodbye to the teachers, shaking their hands and everything and the Deputy Head, Mr Webb, he refused to shake hands with me and that’s a vivid memory, which is still with me. Probably well deserved, but perhaps he, on reflection, might have handled it a little bit differently because it made quite a mark on me that he felt that I hadn’t come up to scratch and didn’t justify a handshake.

I’m pleased to be associated with it though and I’m a school governor now.

Tony Feek: Attendance 1945-1955

I think one of the other big memories, probably for everyone, is the smell of a school, the smell of plasticine and the smell of… even chalk! My lasting thought of the school, is one of just sheer friendliness. Definitely. That’s the main thing, being friendly.

Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961-1967

It always seemed to me, after I’d left, that it was a very forward thinking school.

Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-1971

My dad had come here, so it’s been sort of like the family school to go to.

Tracy Martin: Attendance 1970s

The abiding memory of St Luke’s really is just that it was an incredibly happy place. It was a pleasure to go to school and it was just so much fun. Just a lotta fun and a Iotta happiness and a lotta laughs.

Peter Ockenden: Attendance 1976-1980

I can’t remember it not being really great.

Daniel Hill: Attendance 1977-1984

Contributors

Vera Avis: Attendance 1920—28
Kathleen Back: Attendance 1908—15
Yvonne Banks: Attendance 1936—40s
Terry Beddell: Attendance 1939—49
Brian Bergin: Attended 1937—48
Keith Bergin: Attendance 1936—40
Anne Bowden: Attendance 1961—67
John Bower: Attendance 1920s
Ray Bradford: Attendance 1952—59
Doreen Broomfield: Attendance 1943—50
Gail Buckle: Attendance 1970s
Janice Burrell (nee Sargent): Attendance 1952—60
Enid Bywater-Lees (nee Doherty): Attendance 1938—44
Joyce Campbell (nee Farley): Attendance 1933—38
Alan Carter: Attendance 1933—36
Ken Chambers: Attendance 1927—33
Julie Cherriman: Attendance 1946—48
Peter Clark: Attendance 1937—46
Ashton Clarke: Attendance 1924—34
Gwen Cole: Attendance 1942—49
Dawn Constable (nee Adams): Attendance 1963—69
Doreen Corbett: Attendance 1937—44
Elizabeth Corbett (nee Vickery): Attendance 1944—47
Edward Cosham: Attendance 1934-1937
Lana Jayne Dawson (nee Burrell): Attendance 1976—84
John Denyer: Attendance 1956—60
Edna Dray: Attendance 1927—1931
Chris Eager: Attendance 1960- 1964
Robert Eager: Attendance 1958-1962
Jackie Eason: Attendance 1950s
Jeanette Eason: Attendance 1960s
Jean Eatwell: Attendance 1941—47
Jim Elmes: Attendance 1928—34
Fred Farley: Attendance 1928—35
Pamela Fearnhead (nee Bergin): Attendance 1935—35
Tony Feek: Attendance 1945—55
Stanley Ford: Attendance 1939—41
Ray Fowler: Attendance 1953—59
Leonard Frost: Attendance 1925—1935
Raymond Frost: Attendance 1929—39
Owen Gurton: Attendance 1932
June Helyer (nee Bampton): Attendance 1957—61
Daniel Hill: Attendance 1977—84
Brian Hills: Attendance 1953—60
Fred Hogbin: Attendance 1930—33
Edward Humphrey: Attendance 1930—39
Pennie Ingram (nee Woodall): Attendance 1963—70
Ernest Johnson: Attendance 1929—39
Dorothy Jupp: Attendance 1928—32
Derek Leney: Attended 1942—45
Roy Long: Attendance 1932—35
Basil Mansfield: Attendance 1940s
June Marshall (nee Pierce): Attendance 1936—42
Tracy Martin: Attendance 1970s
Maureen Mead (nee Gander): Attendance 1946-52
Gordon Mills: Attendance 1932-42
Peter Ockenden: Attendance 1976-80
Roy Page: Attendance 1943-51
Ernie Pattenden: Attendance 1941-44
Sylvia Pickett (nee Stephens): 1946-48
Dennis Piercey: Attendance 1940-44
Marion Plank: Attendance 1939-45
Marilyn Pomeroy (nee Sargent): Attendance 1953-61
George Pope: Attendance 1929-37
Eileen Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s
Pamela Price: Attendance 1930s-1940s
Bob Pullen: Attendance 1938-49
Pete Pullinger: Attendance 1933-38
Brian Ravenett: Attendance 1949-50
Jackie Robinson (nee Smith): Attendance 1952-57
Neil Rogers: Attendance 1974-78
John Rolfe: Attendance 1940-50
Larry Rushin: Attendance 1966-75
Heather Sallis: Attendance 1966-71
Martyn Sallis: Attendance 1964-71
Ronald Satterley: Attendance 1926-37
Gerald Spicer: Attendance 1934-35
Alan Stafford: Attendance 1953-59
Jean Stedman: Attendance 1940-44
Brenda Street: Attendance 1939-46
Frank Taylor: Attendance 1949-53
Reuben Taylor: Attendance 1972-78
Tom Taylor: Attendance 1946-50
Fred Tester: Attendance 1912-22
Wendy Tribe: Attendance 1940s
Fred Trott: Attendance 1929-32
Bert Tully: Attendance 1930-39
Joe Tunmer: Attendance 1981-89
Nick Vivaldi: Attendance 1970s
Barbara Walker: Attendance 1940-45
Peter Warland: Attendance 1961-67
John Washington: Attendance 1949-55
Reginald Weedon: Attendance 1925-34
Brian Williams: Attendance 1950-56
Barbara Wood: Attendance 1940-45
Denise Young (nee Bignell): Attendance 1947-51