NextBackMy first recollections are of my mother taking me to the Infants School at the age of five.
The building was on the site of the present doctors surgery across the road from the church. It consisted of three classrooms, the first, ( I discovered just prior to demolition was little more than twelve feet square) with a central coke stove.
Miss Ledbury, our first teacher, was more like a lovely mother figure and I have fond clear memories of fine summer afternoons when she would take out into a large wooden covered shelter in the playground and read us stories.
Adjoining the classrooms was the Parish Room which was next to the School House, which was occupied by the caretaker Mr Haines, his wife and two sons. The younger of the two sons, Dennis with whom I went to school, at the age of sixteen, gassed himself in the house when his girl friend rejected him.
The playground area was at the rear of the present row of houses and extended as far as the present driveway.
In those days both the Infants School and the St. Luke's C of E Mixed School were referred to by all the locals as the Little School and the Big School.
At the age of around eight we all transferred to Big School and that's where the serious education began.
I have varying memories of what I thought of the teachers which varied from the tolerable to the hateful but without a doubt Miss Winnie Holiday was the nicest of all.
Shortly afterwards was the outbreak of war and I can clearly remember being marched across to the church to pray for the safe evacuation from Dunkirk
