"Dreams - Really Do Come True" - A Book By Gordon Beard

School

The sound of the school bell on the sunny January morning that was my first half day at school caused me to skip in time to it as I clutched my elder brother Reginald’s hand. This was the day I had longed and prayed for and I can still recall my excitement as I was allocated my own double peg in the lobby – top peg for my hat, bottom peg for my coat and satchel. I was soon surrounded by a crowd of other boys and girls and one boy in particular, who was six months my senior, tacked on to me. We soon became inseparable pals. His birthday was the 4 November and I have discovered all my life the natural bonding of Scorpios and Pisceans. His name was John Perry.

The school was built of red brick in the Victorian-style with a short tower and pinnacle roof housing the bell at the southern end. The north end was the private accommodation of the head teacher, Miss Caroll -in those days, only single women were accepted as teachers in any class. The building was divided into three rooms. The infants, aged 5-8, were at the north end, adjoining the head mistress’s quarters. The school usually had around 50 pupils, with five the official starting age. In the other rooms were the 8-11s and the 11-14s. The whole building was heated by one Tortoise coke-fuelled stove in the 11-14 area which was surrounded by an iron railing for safety reasons. The middle and infant areas had to rely on hot air circulating above the glass dividing panels which were set at half room height. There was no ceiling to the classrooms so they extended to the oak rafters of the apex roof.

The infant teacher, Miss Bacon, seemed very adult and learned to us, although she was in fact a sweet, kind girl in her teens. She had received her schooling like us at the village school and had recently completed a short course at college to entitle her to teach. She wore a long-sleeved blouse and three-quarter-length tweed skirt, lisle stockings and leather brogue lace up shoes. Her hair was parted in the centre, drawn back tightly behind her head and tied with a white ribbon. She wore no jewellery.

The middle class of 8-11s was taught by Miss Iris Claydon, the eldest daughter of the local shopkeeper. She was around 30 years old and tall with dark, curly, bobbed hair.

Miss Caroll was a strict but kind, middle-aged woman who loved nature, flowers and animals – she had an especially great love of gardening and grew her own vegetables. She always seemed to wear the same outfit like a uniform - the three-quarter-length brown tweed skirt and V-necked, long-sleeved jumper. On her wrist was an unusual tortoiseshell wrist watch and the V of her neck was always filled by an enormous diamond pendant which revealed all the colours of the rainbow when the sun shone through the classroom window. Her head was covered by an enormous yellow broad brimmed straw boater hat decorated with multi-coloured raffia-stitched flowers and fastened to her head by large hat pins. She demanded the greatest respect.

High Easter Church of England School circa 1929 with teacher Miss Hilda Bacon, (back l. to r.) Gordon Beard, Hilda Harris, Jim Saunders, John Perry, Roy Allen, Elsie Spearman & George Owers. (front l. to r.), Gwen Joyce, John Redman, Hilda Redman, Leonard Day, Evelyn Day, Norman Mead & Madge Beard (my sister).

On the dot of nine each day, Miss Caroll would enter the class room from her living quarters and we would all have to stand to attention and chant “Good morning Ma’am’” as she passed through each classroom before taking up her position behind her desk. She would slap the palm of her left hand with the cane she carried in her right as a warning to the future ploughmen occupying the rear benches of her classroom. The infants’ room had a cheerful feeling. The walls had not been plastered and the imprint of the brickwork was still visible under the many coats of oil paint that had been applied down the years. The present one was a bright sunshine yellow from the roof down to about four feet above the floor where a two inch band of blue separated the lime green lower part. Although the room had no heater, the hardy pupils were used to living in homes with only one stove and huge gaps between doors and door posts letting in icy cold winter blasts. Most of them had walked or run up to three miles to school.

Those from the north came from as far as the borders of Barnston. Those from the east came from the Pleshey boundary and those from the south stretched as far as the Good Easter limit. There were only a couple of houses to the west. One was called Pear Trees, the other Fox and Crows and these children would take the footpath across the fields to meet the road near the brook corner and join us from Hopkins for the final few hundred yards to school. They were often red-faced from the effort of running the last half mile to beat the dreaded cessation of the tolling school bell which, for latecomers, meant the cane. The senior boys assured us that, if we ever did face this punishment, one small strand of hair from a horse’s tail held between the thumb and forefinger and draped across the palm could take all the sting out of it. But I was not convinced.

Lessons began with a short prayer, followed by the introduction of the bead frame - the forerunner to today’s computer, it was later named the Abacus. It took a while to learn how to count the number of beads left from ten when we moved two away but we persevered and soon got the hang of it. Multiplication was not possible on this machine so we were each issued with an arithmetic book that had our names boldly printed on the cover. This was kept in the locker beneath the lids of our desks, which were made of oak. Two pupils, one boy and one girl, sat together at a desk - they obviously intended us to get close to the opposite sex at an early age! My partner was Gwen Joyce, whose birthday was 6 June. She was a pale, fragile individual, who made any excuse to stay away from school and always had a headache on a Monday. We worked on all the subjects from Monday to Thursday but Friday was a special day when we could choose our favourite subjects, provided we did one session of arithmetic. This allowed the teacher to check our book work for the week. It was marked by a tick for correct and a cross for wrong. Good, very good and excellent were the comments to expect. If we got an excellent mark, we were rewarded by none other than Miss Caroll herself who would come into class, brandishing a cream biscuit.

Miss Bacon seemed to like me and usually called out my name at the start of lessons to go and collect the slates from the cupboard behind where she stood. I had to get down on my knees to open the cupboard door, kneeling close to her feet and I would always sneak a look up her skirt. ‘Red,’ I’d whisper to each pupil as I handed out their slates. It had become my job to report the colour of Miss Bacon’s knickers!

Play time was a great period of relaxation from lessons between 1111.15am. We all ran from the classrooms to the communal play area of approximately one acre. There was a gravelled area close to the buildings that ran up to the edge of the brick-built toilet block. Then there was a dividing wall, separating the girls from the boys, and a large area of grass for playing football or cricket. We had no equipment, no swings or climbing frames and we had to put our jackets on the ground to mark the goal posts. Usually though, we played soldiers because all our comics were full of stories about the heroes of the Great War. John Perry who lost his dad in the fighting, arrived at school one day with his father’s medals pinned on his chest to get one up on me at play time. I was deeply upset by this one-upmanship but, because I believed every word Miss Bacon said, I felt confident that I could recover my pride. ‘God will grant us anything if we pray in earnest,’ she told us in the Scripture lesson that morning so, that night, I pleaded with all my heart for God to grant me some medals. How disappointed I was to look under my pillow the next morning and find no medals there.

Iris Claydon, the 8-11s teacher was aloof with us and I have no outstanding memories of my time in her class. I think it was a serious, hard-working period of education with no frills from a local lady who probably worked hard at remaining neutral. One instance though, does come to mind about a girl from the borders of Pleshey, who told me that a family had moved next door to her from the Pitcairn Islands. This brought a history lesson on the Pitcairns. I also remember learning a poem from the American Civil War.

Up from the meadows, rich with corn, cool on a clear September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand, green walled by the hills of Maryland.
Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead
Halt! The dusk brown ranks stood fast Out blazed the rifle blast
Quick as it fell from its broken mast Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf
“Shoot if you must this old grey head, but spare your country’s flag”, she said.

I also remember that the boys would keep the girls awake by pulling their hair…

But the senior class under Miss Caroll was much more exciting. In this class the boys were each allocated a piece of allotment and I enjoyed this. The seed was provided free and Miss Caroll was an expert gardening instructor. We all competed with each other for prizes at the village show and I did well, most memorably winning the prize for Best Carrots which came about entirely by accident. Miss Caroll had been teaching us how to double dig a plot and I did it all wrong. But the carrot bed I’d planted three feet deep instead of two turned out to be an advantage and my carrots grew some 18 inches long and very fat!

Another good thing about Miss Caroll’s class was that we had become more adult – well, old enough to learn the art of doing things while Miss Caroll’s back was turned, anyhow! The girls would toss love letters over the shoulders of their favourite heart-throbs and needless to say, these changed frequently. I received letters from Winnie Mead one week, Molly Neville another. My platonic affair with Dolly Perry continued even after leaving school. But top of the pops was the beautiful brunette with lovely wavy hair, deep blue eyes and a figure that would have made page three of the Sun newspaper had it been around in those days. Her name was Iris Joyce.

Iris was a newcomer to our class, having moved to our village from Great Waltham aged 12, and she was rather more advanced than the rest of us. My brother Keith told me of an instance when he jumped the boundary hedge to recover the football and fell over Jack Massey and Ernest Harris both in the ditch beside her. I suppose they must have been rescuing her after she had fallen in!

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