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Firth Park Grammar School Part One

The year 1948 was a significant one in my young life. First and foremost because  one fine summer morning in June that year the postman brought the results of my recent eleven-plus examination to our door.

My mother nervously opened the manilla envelope with the words Sheffield Education Committee printed across it in bold letters on it and read that her son, Frederick Alexander Boyd, had been awarded a place at Firth Park Grammar School and that he would be required to wear a maroon blazer and cap (which gave the school its popular name of the `Red Cap School`), both emblazoned with the school badge, school tie, grey shorts and socks and black shoes. He was also to be equipped with shorts, vest and plimsolls for PT, swimming trunks, football boots, and  no doubt various other odds and ends whose combined cost amounted to a tidy sum. There was no complaint from my parents; as far as they were concerned no sacrifice was too great where their son's future was concerned.

I went to school that morning filled with excitement. Three of my class-mates, I discovered,  were also going to Firth Park Grammar School which lay just the other side of Longley Park; others were going to King Edward's or to High Storrs, both grammar schools on the other side of the city. There were tears as well as celebrations. Girls who had confidently excepted to pass - and not without cause - had failed. Some wept with shame and bewilderment while others mourned the loss of classmates who would now be going to different schools and making new friends Most of the boys and girls who had not been allocated grammar or technical school places were now destined for Southey Green Secondary Modern School and understood only too well that they had been rejected. For them there was no jubilation, no congratulations, no excited curiosity about what lay ahead. They took away with them only the stigma of failure, so that I cannot recall that far distant day now without a pang of sadness. It was, perhaps, on the very last occasion I went back to visit my old grammar school that I mentioned to my former geography teacher my understanding that pupils at Sheffield's secondary modern schools who showed particular promise after the second year were given the opportunity to transfer to grammar schools. Did any of these boys ever come to Firth Park? Oh yes, they did, he replied, but they were never any good.. Surely, I thought, thy unworthiness and exclusion shall follow thee all the days of thy life…

As the summer holiday weeks passed one by one, my elation at achievement was overshadowed by apprehension as to what lay ahead. There  were rumours that all new boys entering the portals of the grammar school on their first day would be seized and subjected to a `traditional` initiation ceremony which consisted of having their heads pushed down one of the lavatories while the chain was pulled. It was only too easy to give credence to such stories since, in contrast to the friendly, familiar red-brick aspect of  Longley Primary - which now looked more cosy and reassuring than ever - my new school appeared grim and intimidating. It centrepiece was a  late eighteenth-century stone-built house in the northern industrial-baronial style complete with tower and battlements which looked altogether more appropriate to withstanding a siege than welcoming young seekers after knowledge. Three wings had been added later at various times to enclose an inner quadrangle with a few modest trees and shrubs and  a lawn which young feet were strictly prohibited from treading.  

The first headmaster was a rather remarkable character, a Dr Lloyd Storr-Best, who knew ten languages, including Ancient and Modern Greek, was a fine gymnast, was on intimate terms with the leading Sheffield industrialists, kept an excellent wine-cellar and, it was alleged, treated the Sheffield Education Office with disdain. His reign lasted until 1932 and set in stone many of the  school's traditions and customs. It was, first and foremost, an all-boys` school, the pupils wore distinctive maroon blazers and caps, and the school song was set to Latin words – all six verses of it. In short, its ethos was that of a minor public school with its improbably pious Latin motto "Non Nobis Sed Aliis". Already the curriculum's voracious appetite for foreign languages stimulated by the outrageously gifted and multilingual Dr Storr-Best was providing a choice between German, Latin, Spanish, Italian or Russian when the allocation of a second language was applied to pupils embarking on their second year. The school buildings, as I knew them, had been completed by the only truly pleasing part of the school, the library wing,  built in 1936-37.

My arrival at the school in 1948 coincided with the retirement of the school's second headmaster, Dr. W.Padfield, and the appointment of his youthful successor, Dr. W.R.C. Chapman, who stayed until 1958 and therefore presided over my entire secondary school career. Dr Chapman   ( or `RC`, or as he was known ) had a blonde moustache and a quiff of blonde hair falling across his forehead, and therefore stood out among his largely veteran staff, some of whom had been teaching at the school since the end of the Great War. Three of the school's four houses were named after its renowned field marshals and admirals - Haig, Beatty and Foch (I was allocated to 'I Foch' ), the fourth being simply called `Kings`, which seemed to indicate a lack of imagination given the overall theme. Why not Trenchard?. I remember my first three years as being unremarkable. I think now that I displayed fairly mediocre scholarly abilities, partly perhaps because I found my new school essentially unappealing and the only pleasures I can recall associating with it at that time were the two-penny iced-lollies sold at morning break time from the school tuck shop. Any pretext which allowed my mother to sanction a day off school was ruthlessly exploited, and I settled down happily with my books or my drawing  while less fortunate class-mates lined up for double maths or shivered at the bus stop on their way to the inhospitable swimming baths at Hillsborough. As I categorically refused to stay for the highly unappetising school dinners (delivered to the school in large metal canisters which contained evil-smelling stew, reekingly over-cooked cabbage and lumpy, vile-tasting mashed potato) which would have made life a good deal easier for my parents, I came home for lunch and therefore crossed Longley Park four times a day. I can clearly and instantly picture the little stream which ran through it and which I dammed with stones and twigs as a child, the clumps of trees where I later wandered with friends, the swimming pool where, presumably as part of the celebrations marking the end of the war in the summer of 1945, someone set themselves alight and then dived from the highest diving board into the water, and the public tennis courts where I spent happy hours in my mid-teens. .Longley Park was my vital air-lock between school and home where I could belong wholly to myself and my own imagination.

By the time I reached the third year, things had brightened a little. My school report in form 3B in July 1951  placed me second in a form of  thirty-two Although my work in Religious Knowledge had `deteriorated`, I showed a `gratifying improvement` in English and it was noted that I belonged to the library and was reading widely. My grade in most subjects was B, apart from a D for Mathematics (in which I achieved the distinction of coming thirty-second  earning the comment `very poor` ], and Field Games at which I was just `poor`  My form master wrote that it was a `very fine report` and that I had achieved tenth position in the year, while the headmaster added the comments `splendid`  (with the exception, even he had to admit, of my prowess at maths) and that I had qualified for a place in Lower Transitus, the cadet stream for the sixth form.

School reports, brought home with trepidation twice a year, were complemented by annual parents` evenings attended by my mother. Overawed by the gloomy interior of the school and the black-gowned masters, she returned home with enigmatic interpretations of their verdicts on my progress. "The Physics chap," she confided after one such visit, `thinks you're a complete nom de plume at his subject."

Most of the masters had nicknames created by former pupils and perpetuated by their successors. Like most nicknames bestowed by schoolchildren on their teachers they were somehow entirely fitting. The  rotund Dr Rhodes who taught Chemistry was `Prods`, but I was chiefly taught by a Dr Hilton from whose gloomy laboratory I  watched the brightly-lit trams on winter afternoons as they cautiously negotiated the sharp climbing bend from Stubbin Lane up to the terminus at Sheffield lane Top.  Mr Hipkins, an English master who wore pince-nez and who, in what seemed to us the throes of  extreme senility, often left the class to its own devices while he went off to the staff room, was 'The Moke'  while another English teacher, a Dr F.T. Wood, was known as `Hefty`. The seemingly formidable deputy head master, Mr Wetherall, had since time immemorial been referred to as `Duke`,  Mr Pengelly who taught biology was 'Pongo' while the rather mild-mannered Mr Pascoe who taught Geography was known as `Pansy`.

Most formidable was the terrifying `Gags`, a Dr James Gagan who was Senior Mathematics Master at Firth Park from 1919 until his retirement in 1955 and whose classroom adjoined the Head's study on the first floor of the school's tower. Gags was, no doubt, a brilliant mathematician with his talents much appreciated by the mathematically gifted amongst those he taught. But year after year on the deadening tread-mill involved in inculcating some knowledge of mathematics into duller brains not able instantly to absorb his pithily expressed expositions had refined the less appealing traits in his personality. It was his habit, after each exposition, to select from the register in front of him someone to stand up and answer questions on it. Inability or error was enough to make the unhappy victim the butt of Gags` withering sarcasm. This was, of course, gratefully received by the rest of class as the stressful atmosphere of the lesson was now relieved by the ritual humiliation of one of their number – almost invariably one of those who found maths difficult. I remember only one instance when Gags went out of his way to make his lesson interesting, and that was when a visiting HMI was present. Needless to say, Dr Jekyll had replaced Mr Hyde for the day.

It was Gags, however, who found out that I was short-sighted and unable to see much of what was written on the blackboard. He dragged me across the landing to the school secretary's office and an eye test soon afterwards resulted in a prescription for glasses. Even so, with or without glasses, I was fated to remain at the bottom of the form in Maths as long as Gags was my teacher. Luckily in my GCE year I had a different maths teacher, a Mr Barnes, whose room was located high up under the eaves of the old building. He was not, I think, a mathematician in the Gagan league, just a dedicated teacher who knew that some people take longer than others to understand mathematical precepts. In geometry he painstakingly went through theorems time and time again, and in algebra he patiently and repeatedly explained equations until we eventually understood them. Mr Barnes spent no time berating and debasing the uncomprehending, but just went clearly and carefully over the same problem until we all understood it. It was astonishing how quickly my maths improved once I was out of the intimidating atmosphere of Gags` classroom. I gained not only a creditable pass in maths at `O` level thanks to Mr Barnes, but some very valuable wisdom about teaching in general.

There were other, more harmless, eccentrics on the staff. Joe Over taught French and Italian and had an artificial hand encased in a leather glove with which he would sometimes bat boys on the ear. His classroom on the gym wing had sepia photographs of Rome and Naples around its walls, and as a special treat at the end of term he would play old shellac records of Italian opera on a hand-wound gramophone. Mr Draycott who taught French and German wore his trilby hat all day long and when his patience was ultimately exhausted, as it frequently was, he would slowly lower his face onto his  arms folded in front of him on the desk and swear vehemently but softly to himself in German. The quietly-spoken Mr Machin who came, as one would expect, from the Potteries, always addressed us with the words, "Straight line, boys", when he emerged from his physics lab as we queued up outside it, and distributed 1930s copies of Meccano Magazine to keep us occupied while he completed his end of term reports. And so, for one or two lesson periods a year, I feasted my eyes on elaborate Hornby 00 model railway layouts instead of experiments to determine magnetic fields or specific gravities.

During one physics lesson in Mr Machin's laboratory I happened to glance up and saw a familiar face looking down at me through a sky-light window. It was Fred Tipper, a friend and class-mate from Longley Primary School, now apparently an apprentice window-cleaner. And where did fate lead you, Fred Tipper? Maybe to the ownership of  a lucrative window-cleaning business? I hope it did.

The Art master (who was rumoured to have been a POW of the Japanese and to be still suffering from a nervous disorder) was benign but ineffectual, and I cannot remember ever being taught anything about art, either in a practical sense or about its history or appreciation. We were merely given a subject to paint – either from a still life arrangement or a set subject– and more or less left to our own devices. Sometimes he would walk round the art room, look at our efforts and mutter a bland comment or two. Music was even worse. Apparently in the late twenties and early thirties the school choir had attained some kind of national reputation and successive music masters had felt bound to uphold the `tradition` ever since. Every music lesson given by Mr Parry was therefore devoted to choir practice for either Speech Day or the annual School Concert, both of which were held in the Victoria Hall in the centre of Sheffield - a huge gloomy building which had unfortunately escaped the attentions of the Luftwaffe in December 1940. On both occasions parents came dressed in their Sunday best and the masters wore multicoloured hoods on their gowns denoting their colleges or universities. On Speech Day the head master delivered an address detailing the schools academic and sporting achievements, some city worthy was invited to share his wisdom with us, and books from Ward’s bookshop nearby were conferred as prizes. The only benefit we had as junior pupils was that we were excused homework that evening. The School Concert failed to kindle the slightest musical spark within me and I am still allergic to the strains of Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze  On one occasion the entire evening was given over to a performance of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel - a work I have detested most heartily ever since.

Even less inspiring were the fortnightly visits to the swimming baths at Hillsborough. I failed utterly to see any point in immersing myself in cold and chlorine-pungent water when no proper instruction in swimming was ever provided. We were accompanied to the baths by the Woodwork and PT master, Charlie Crownshaw, who strolled round he edge of the pool with a cigarette in his mouth and at times pulled a piece of rope along through the water, presumably in the hope that this would somehow convert those standing with their feet on the bottom into confident swimmers.

The teaching of English Literature was particularly uninspiring. In Moke`s uninspiring classroom at the base of the tower we toiled our way through Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Moonfleet, Lorna Doone and Kinglake`s Eothen, either reading round the class or going over the essays set for homework.. I cannot recall learning anything about the writers themselves or the relevance of their work to the world or to life in general. We (doubtless fortunately) studied no poetry at all apart from later trudging through Milton's Samson Agonistes for A Level, and I discovered the pleasures of poetry for myself when I was about fifteen from the wonderful Faber Book of Modern Verse donated by the Armytages. I have 'Moke' to thank for the fact that it was not until later in my life that I began to see in Shakespeare's plays something more than an unenthusiastic recitation round a dusty schoolroom by a class of bored schoolboys. In Moke's opinion the epitome of literary excellence was exemplified, as he often informed us, by a detective novel entitled Trent's Last Case.

I cannot remember any of the History I was taught at this time, apart from one occasion when the set homework was to draw a picture of Hadrian’s Wall. Lacking any relevant visual reference, I resorted to copying a view of the Great Wall of China from a postage stamp and received a mark of eight out of ten, which gravely undermined the subject's entire credibility in my eyes.

Alex Boyd (21.05.06)