Harold Burton - pupil 1934 - 1941

I went to Firth Park in 1934 from Marlcliffe Road Primary School, near the Middlewood tram terminus, not knowing what to expect, and not even being sure how to get there.  We had to provide our own textbooks and had been given a list of those we would need.    Some of us had bought the books new, but we found that existing pupils were anxious to sell us the books they had finished with, at very low prices.  That was the first lesson: never do anything in too much of a hurry. 

Our first form master was Jock McKay, and to start with he registered us by calling out our names.   This did not happen in later years when we were better known, but it means that I can remember many of those who started with me:  Barton, Burton, Dawn, Ferguson, Frith, Harrap, Hawley, Haynes, Head, Heath, Hodgson…….   Our form room was on the top floor of the old building, dark, with low ceiling.

At that time, there was a tradition of bullying 'fags'.   As I was relatively young (still only 10) and rather small into the bargain, I didn't like this  much, and some of us tried to keep out of the way at lunchtimes for the sake of our own comfort.  I don't know whether this pernicious practice continued for long, because after the first year or two you rose above it.

Many of the staff remained at the school for many years, and are mentioned  in other places on the Web site.   One who retired after my first year was Mr Le Manquais who taught physics in the old physics laboratory at the top of the steps from the main entrance.   He was a teacher of the old type, with a large shaggy moustache, steel-rimmed glasses and an expanse of waistcoat   I realise now that he looked like G.K. Chesterton in some of the photographs of the author.   He kept order with the aid of a metre rule that never seemed to leave his hand.

One of the school crazes at the time was collecting autographs.   Mr Le Manquais' signature was large and bold and stretched diagonally across the whole of a page of an autograph book.   It was the done thing to collect Dr Eker's signature, very small and neat, on the same page down in one corner.   Schoolboys always believe that staff do not know their own nicknames:  we also believed that the two masters had no idea what was happening.

We had two female teachers at that time, Miss Zeiher (who took us for history, and did very neat printed blackboard work) and Miss Sanderson, but both left at the end of my first year.   It was not until I saw the Web site that I realised that Miss Zeiher returned during the war.   The school secretary, Miss Brown, also left when she married Mr Wetherill.

As I moved up through the school, I chose German as second language (Mr Draycott), from Latin, Spanish, Italian and German, then music (with Mr Frost, dropping art and handicraft) and finally geography (dropping history).   Mr Draycott was one of the staff who had a son at the school at that time:  another was Mr Montgomery, whose son, Donald, started with me.   In the Sixth Form, up to what was the Higher School Certificate, I took Maths (Mr Gagan), Chemistry (Mr Rhodes), Geography (Mr Roberts) and Physics (different masters, but the last was Mr Machin).   I thought a lot of the first three, but I never really knew Mr Machin.

Looking back, it surprises me that I was never taught by so many of the staff.   On the other hand, some who are not mentioned on the Web site left a clear memory:   Mr Wrather, a young chemistry teacher who was wide but short, and was a rugby union forward at a time when we knew nothing about rugby:  and Mr Carr ('Oppy Eyelevel), the elderly and rather grumpy art master who was once very taken aback and became almost human when one year we gave him a large chocolate Easter egg.

I won a competitive scholarship to Sheffield University in 1941 to study electrical engineering.   I had at one time thought that no one did any work at university.   However during the war university life, like everything else, was very unusual and we were worked hard. It was made clear that our job was to learn, so that we could be useful scientists and engineers as quickly as possible.   We worked a 4-term year, so that a nominal 3-year degree course was completed in 2 years and 3 months.  Each Saturday and Sunday morning we had military training and a week of each 'vacation' was taken up with continuous training based on the university sports ground at Norton:  once a year we had a spell away at an army camp, in our case at the King's Shropshire Light Infantry camp at Shrewsbury.

When we had completed our courses and obtained our degrees, we were directed to work wherever it was felt we would be most useful.   Some went into the army or navy, but I was sent into the aircraft industry, to a company called Rotol which made aircraft and marine propellers.   I became involved in developing ways of using radio-frequency power to heat various material, starting with wood laminates to make propeller blades, but going on to many other things with more peaceful applications.   After the end of the war, with the massive reduction in the need for Rotol's products, peripheral departments were shut down. Our group working on radio-frequency heating moved as a body to form a new company in Grantham financed by an exotic character called Dennis Kendall who had made a lot of money from munitions and also became an independent MP during the war.   Much could be written about his doings, but not here.   This project failed after a couple of years, and I decided to leave radio-frequency heating.

I joined BISRA (British Iron and Steel Research Association), but had nothing at all to do with Sheffield.   I had a predominantly desk job in, of all places, Park Lane in London.  I had to travel to steelworks in England, Scotland and Wales to study problems, and almost all the works I visited have now disappeared.   Then after a couple of years, out of the blue but arising from my previous work at Rotol, I was invited to join the National Institute for Research in Dairying (NIRD), an associated institute of Reading University.   They wanted someone to look into claims by a Danish scientist that it was possible to kill bacteria without heat, by subjecting them to high radio-frequency voltages.   This seemed more interesting than sitting at a desk, even in Park Lane, so I accepted and in 1948 my wife and I moved to Reading where we have lived happily ever since.

This move changed the course of my career.   Within three years I had satisfied myself that the claimed effect did not exist, and so had worked myself out of a job.   However, I found the surroundings congenial.   The NIRD was the largest dairy research establishment in the world, contained a wide range of scientific disciplines and had international connections.   I had become interested in the effect of heat on bacteria and on the chemical components of milk, and with a reasonable knowledge of mathematics to apply to these problems, I was able to establish a new career as a food scientist, specialising in heat treatment to extend storage life.

Ultimately this took me to many countries, lecturing, examining and attending international meetings.   After I retired in 1985, when in its wisdom the Conservative government closed our Institute, I continued with all these activities for many years, and also wrote a book on my specialist subject.   For several years I visited India as a consultant for FAO, but for the last 10 years I have given up work, except when the Internet brings in the occasional enquiry.

I think I was lucky.   I do not think a career in electrical engineering would have been so rewarding:  it has become far to large a field.   Working as I did with scientists  and engineers of many different disciplines has been more fun than working in just one area.   That I was able to make the change  was largely due to the good grounding in mathematics and the basic sciences that the masters at Firth Park gave me, and for which I am eternally grateful.   I am glad that this Web site keeps their memory alive.

Singing at Firth Park 1934 - 41

As mentioned in the section on school history, the school had by 1934 earned a reputation for singing under Dr Desmond MacMahon and the tradition of the annual School Concert was well established.   My first concert was also Dr MacMahon's last (I do not think there was a direct connection), and it was held at the Victoria Hall.   The choir was large, including all those in the first two years who were able to sing at all, and there was an orchestra, but I don't know which.   My recollection is that it was  very formal and 'up-market'. There were settings by Dr MacMahon of poems by Mr Hartley, one of the English masters, including a poem about the Roman encampment at Navio or Brough, in the Hope Valley.   There was also at least one work by Dr MacMahon in which William Morris' poem 'Shameful Death' was spoken by the choir in unison, to the accompaniment of percussion from the orchestra.   I do not think this was widely appreciated.

In 1935, Dr MacMahon moved on to become, I believe, an Inspector of Schools, and his successor was Norman Frost.   Mr Frost was a volatile character, but a very good and stimulating teacher.   He occasionally sported a pair of brown 'plus-fours', if anyone remembers nowadays what they were.   He and his wife had a pet monkey which was very special whenever it appeared at school;  I don’t know what the authorities thought of it! He was unpredictable and would fly into rages which were full of sound and fury rather than of danger.   Once, as the date of a concert approached and he was not satisfied with our performance, he kept the whole of the choir (I suppose some 150 of us) rehearsing in the school hall  for hours after the end of the day, until parents began to fill the yard and demanded an explanation.

Under Norman Frost, concerts moved to the City Hall and were accompanied by the Sheffield Symphony Orchestra.  Part of the concert was generally broadcast on the North Region of the BBC and the songs became rather more acceptable.  We introduced an arrangement of 'Rule, Britannia' which was very popular.  The first time we sang it, I remember looking up into the circle seats and seeing and elderly member of the audience, probably a grandfather, reading his copy of the 'Star':  after it had finished, he was clapping furiously with a big smile on his face.  An encore was needed!

Norman Frost also introduced the Special Choir.   This was a small group with selected juniors and some seniors and masters, to give trebles, altos, tenors and basses.   I started as an alto, because I could already read music, and became a bass after my voice broke.

In 1937, at the time of the Coronation of King George VI, the school was asked to take part in a national broadcast of school choirs, with our contribution coming from the North Region studios in Leeds.   I think this must have been a selected group of treble and alto voices.   We travelled by train, accompanied by Mr Frost and 'Spike' Johnson, did the broadcast in the late morning, had lunch at a hotel in Leeds, and then went to a cinema where we saw a highly unsuitable film for boys called 'Theodora Goes Wild', before the journey home.

The studio looked from the outside like a converted Wesleyan chapel, with the main studio in what had presumably been the meeting hall.  Many years later, when I regularly visited Leeds University as a lecturer and examiner, I realised that the studio was opposite the University, and it is now the base for Radio Leeds.  Fifty years after the broadcast, on one of my last visits to the University, I called in and introduced myself.  I was welcomed warmly, and one of their DJs took me for a tour of the building and its working.  The studio from which we broadcast was still recognisably the same:  only the equipment was more modern.

Norman Frost left in 1939, again to become an Inspector of Schools, I believe.  He was succeeded by Mr Benoy, a younger man who played the flute.  He did not have chance to hold concerts in the City Hall because the war had started.  I only remember that he tried to get the Special Choir to sing Gustav Holst's 'Hymns from the Rig Veda', with no great success.   By the time I left, a lady had taken over, because young male teachers were called away.

My final recollection is of a small group being organised by 'Spike' Johnson to sing carols at the Nether Chapel in Norfolk Street, of which he was a member, at Christmas 1940.   Our rehearsals were interrupted by the air raids on Sheffield in December 1940, and although we rehearsed a few more times in the Music Room, where the ceiling had collapsed, we could not sing the carols because the chapel was too badly damaged to by used.

Starting at school, I have sung in choirs for most of my life, until with great regret I had to give it up a few years ago because I can no longer read music because of eyesight problems.

Harold Burton

The school and the 1939-45 war 

The war affected many former pupils at Firth Park as individuals.  The Honours and the Memorial Boards copied on this Web site show how some of them were affected.  I knew well some of those who won awards for gallantry, and some of those who died were my friends.   There were also those whose names  do not appear on the Memorial Board because they died on active service but not in action.  They are remembered, too.

The school as a building suffered very little.  The playing field lost only a little space to air-raid shelters, unlike that at High Storrs, where one of the early radar stations, with a large area of wire netting forming an artificial earth, took up much of the area.  As an institution, though, some things happened that do not seem to be recorded anywhere.

The first impact of the war on the school was long before it even began.  There was at that time a fear that poison gas would be used against civilians, and preparations were made to provide gas masks for all, including the smallest children.   he Munich crisis of September 1938 led to the issue of gas masks to everyone, but first they had to be assembled from their separate parts and put into cardboard carrying boxes.  A production line for assembling the masks was set up in the old chemistry lab, where the boys put together the carbon filter canisters and the face masks with flexible eyepieces and holding straps.  There were three sizes and the face masks had to be put on the filters in different places for each size and held in position by very strong rubber belts.  Masters supervised the assembly.  I have no idea how many we assembled, or how many schools were doing the same job, but a mask had to be assembled for every person in the land.

When the war actually began in September 1939, heavy air raids were expected immediately, and the government ordered that not more than, I think twelve people could assemble in one place.  This shut down all sorts of activities, but it also shut all schools.  Arrangements were quickly made for small groups to be taught wherever space could be found, concentrating on those years that were preparing for important examinations.  Some groups could be scattered through the school, but we were given Sixth Form maths lessons in the billiard room of a large house near to the school in Barnsley Road, sitting wherever we could.

The senior geography master, Mr Roberts, lived a little way down hill opposite Longley Park, and we had geography lessons in his front room.

Air raids did not happen at that time, so that after a few weeks everything returned to normal.  It was December 1940, when heavy raids occurred.   The first was on the night of 12-13 December.   I was up all night, on duty as a messenger in the Air Raid Precautions organisation, so I was late to school on the morning of the 13^th.   As there was no public transport of any kind, I used my bike.  It was a waste of time, because no-one had been able to reach the school, and it was empty and shut.

A second heavy raid occurred on the following Sunday night. Instead of being concentrated mainly on the city centre, it affected the north-eastern parts and the Don valley.   Fortunately, although severe, it was shorter and ended before midnight.   When I arrived at school on the following morning, it was far from empty.   There were many unexploded bombs and parachute mines in the area behind the school and many people had had to leave their houses and move into the school, where they were all crowded into the school hall.  Any boys who had arrived were sent home, but those masters who had arrived, with Mr Ironside ("Tinribs"), the caretaker, were trying to produce some sort of order.

As school captain, I worked alongside the masters, as did some other seniors.  Gradually,  order was established.  The rooms in the New Corridor were set aside as dormitories where family groups could settle down as best they could with whatever things they had managed to bring with them.

Food and bedding were problems.  I cannot remember where food came from, but there was no power for cooking.   In those days, between the two gateways into Barnsley Road where prefabricated classrooms later stood, there was a semicircle of rough shrubbery.  Spike Johnson, with some other masters with scouting connections like Mr Barker and Mr Bell, made a camp kitchen, but I do not know if it was ever used.

When it was realised that people would be staying in the school overnight, blankets were needed.  These were supplied by the City General Hospital (as the Northern General was then)  I was told to go to the lower part of the hospital at the junction of Barnsley Road and Pitsmoor Road (the part known to all old Sheffielders as 'the Workhouse') to collect them.  I wheeled a pile of them back up the hill to the school.

After a few days, cleanliness and hygiene became something of a problem.  Mr Draycott, the German master, was apparently a grower and breeder of roses, and he brought in a large knapsack sprayer.   We made up a solution of diluted Izal disinfectant, and it became part of my duties every day to spray all the rooms that were being used.  The small was pungent, so we thought it must be doing some good.   After a few days, my skin began to itch and further study showed that I was using a concentration at least twice that recommended, and of course I had no protective clothing.  There was no lasting ill-effect.

Those of us helping to run the school as a very rudimentary hotel gathered for lunch and talk in Marjorie Howard's small office. Space was cramped and seats were scarce.  My usual place was sitting on top of one of the filing cabinets.  The camaraderie between the masters and we relatively few pupils quite unusual for that time, and perhaps nothing was quite the same afterwards: the masters were no longer masters but friends.

Slowly the unexploded bombs and mines were dealt with or exploded and people were able to return to their homes or move to other accommodation.  By Christmas, everyone had left and Mr Ironside had the job of returning the buildings to normal.  During the 'running-down' period, Spike took his car with one or two of us to try to track down some of those pupils who lived in the most badly affected areas of the city and who had not been heard of.  It was a fruitless exercise:  everyone was scattered and we found none of those we were looking for.

However, when the school reassembled in the New Year, it seemed that there had been no serious casualties.  We were very lucky.

I left in the summer of 1941, so I have no real knowledge of later events.   I am told, though, that apart from the occasional air-raid warning and visit to the shelters, things were able to go on as normal.   It was my luck to be around when schooldays became a bit more interesting.

Harold Burton

Related information:

• FPGS pupils
• Singing at Firth Park 1934 - 1941
• School Orchestra