My first school was Edgware Primary School in Edgware, Middlesex, north London - now Edgware Infant and Nursery School. The headmaster was a Mr Bird. I started when I just before I was 5 in 1944 while the Second World War was still on, and I left at 11 for my grammar school.
The first class was known as 'The Babies', and my teacher was Miss Reebold. That was how her name sounded, but I have no idea of the spelling. Although the main playground was at the front of the school, we 'babies' had our own small grey stone-walled playground leading off our classroom. I always thought how neat and friendly it looked.
My year class at Edgware Primary School: I never knew how to spell my classmates' names, and their names here are as they sounded to me. Left to right, where I can remember:
Back row: Christopher Cooper, -, Harvey Selby, Michael Shiner, James Ballantyne, Stephen Newing, -, Stephen Golland, Robert Levin.
Second from back row: -, Christopher Richardson (Kit), Roger Warrington, David Arnold, Roy Boskin, Colin Brooks, -, -, Ian -,Tony Wilson..
Middle row: Rhona -, Janet Steele, Helen Davis, Pamela -, -, Ann Dempsey, Brenda Mialls, Daphne -, -.
Second row from front: Myra -, Hazel Waterfall, -, -, Janet Saunders (Ginny), Pat Clarke (me), Jennifer Moss, Margaret Rennie..
Front row: Susan Knapp, Ann Rogers, Corrine Less, Jean Breedon, Susan Turner.
A recent photograph of what was Edgware Primary School, courtesy of Tony Woods.
The classroom furniture was tables and small chairs.
I am grateful for additional information from my classmates David Arnold and Christine Tolton (formerly Christine Culley).
If any of my contemporaries can add further information, correct anything I have wrongly remembered, or provide photos, please get in touch. Pat Cryer.
After the first few days when our mothers walked with us to school, we always walked just with the other children from the road where I lived, Brook Avenue. It never occurred to anyone that it might be dangerous. I suppose there was some safety in numbers, and there was certainly less traffic around then.
There were 30-40 children in a year group.
All the classrooms after the Reception year were simple large flat rooms, and the furniture was identical to what my mother described for the early 1900s classroom: a wooden high desk and chair for the teacher, a wooden-framed blackboard on an easel and two-seater desks for us children.
Miss Weinstock was my first teacher at Edgware Primary School and I always remember her kindness when Mr Bird summoned her to come and collect this very frightened little girl on her first day there, and how she held my hand all the way to the classroom and was kindness itself in helping me settle in to a new situation.
Sally Lawson (formerly Sally Porte)
Other teachers included Miss Ackroyd, Mrs Harmer, Miss Scutt, Mr Dashwood, Miss Sturdy, Mr Duckett, Miss Weinstock and Mr Perrett.
To the back of the Reception playground was the caretaker's house where Mrs Milner lived. I suppose there must have been a Mr Milner although I don't remember him. Mrs Milner, like most women of her age, was large, as if she had had many children, and she was always sour and bad tempered. Maybe she had good reason to be: it was wartime and who knows who she had lost in her family.
It was Mrs Milner's job to wash the beakers that we drank our free school milk from, and they always stunk of sour milk. I always tried to find a mug that didn't smell - but so did all the children. Mrs Milner would see the children smelling the mugs and she got very cross. Much later, the milk arrived in crates of small 1/3 of a pint glass bottles and the children drank directly from them using drinking straws.
Another thing that stands out in my memory from Edgware Primary School is the lavatory floors. They, like other loos of the time, were of a stone-like composite, particles of which glistened in the light. I used to try to get to one of the 'sparklers' to pick it up, but by the time I reached it, the light was no longer on it and it had turned to dull grey stone. The lavatories themselves were low, and they flushed with a pull-chain - so things in the 1940s had improved since my mother's experience of school lavatories in the early 1900s!
Once the war was over, Britain was gripped in even worse austerity, particularly with food shortages. My class teacher was a Mrs Harmer, and I used to wonder why certain children in my class were so obviously her favourites, as I couldn't see any difference between them and me. Only later did I realise the significance of their parents being managers of food shops.
I well remember being May Queen at Edgware Primary School. It would have been in my last year there - 1952.
Some time before the day, about six girls from my year were paraded around the classes, and the children in these classes voted for who they wanted to be May Queen. How the original group were chosen escapes me, or perhaps I never knew. I think the girls who came second and third were the Attendants. I was still hobbling around with one leg in plaster (after breaking my foot) so goodness knows how I won - sympathy vote perhaps!
The event started with a procession around the playground with all the children lining the route! Then the May Queen and her attendants went up on to a raised "stage" where the Queen was crowned by the Queen from the previous year. Sally Porte was one of my attendants, but I don't remember who else. Miss Sturdy was the organiser.
After the crowning, I had to make a speech. Then there was dancing round the maypole, with various classes taking part.
Parents were allowed to come. So there was much applause for all those taking part. There were one or two black and white photos of the event, but I guess they went the way of all things.
Margaret Clayton (formerly Margaret Culley)
The May Day celebrations at school were very similar to my mother's description of her school's celebrations of May Day in Edwardian times. We had a maypole in the playground and danced round it intertwining its ribbons just as she describes in some detail. In addition one of the girl pupils was crowned as May Queen.
Crowning of the May Queen, about 1947. The May Queen's name was Helen Kingston and her attendant on the far left was Brenda Mialls.
Dancing round the maypole, about 1947
In my last year at Edgware Primary School, we children were prepared for the 'scholarship', ie the '11 plus exam' as it later came to be called. All the children in the class sat for it, and the outcome determined whether their next school would be a grammar school or a secondary modern.
The class teacher was a man, a Mr Perrett, who was wonderful at his job. I don't know whether he was back from the war or whether he had reason never to have been called up for service. In that year, I was awarded the class prize for progress - even though as far as I was concerned I didn't do anything differently. I suppose that Mr Perrett was interesting and logical, and just made work a matter of course. In his care I also passed the 11-plus exam to Copthall County Grammar School, the best grammar school in the area. I remain eternally grateful for the excellent and free education I received there under the headship of Miss Heys-Jones. She even bothered to summon my father to the school when she found out that I was to leave to train as a shorthand typist. "That girl", she told him, "deserves a university education, and there are grants available so that she can get it." Her word was law, and to University I went. That was the beginning of a career that I have found stimulating and enjoyable.
The 1940s and 1950s are also written as the 1940's and 1950's.
MORE ON SCHOOLS
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school in the early 1900s
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first school in the 1940s
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grammar
school in the 1950s
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