1958    Form 1 B    Mr. Pascoe

1959    Form 2 S    Mr. Bown

1960    Form 3 A    Mr. Barnes

1961    Form 4 A    Mr. Holmes

1962    L6 A (L)      Mr. Johnson

1963    6 A (L)        Mr. Johnson

1964    U6 A (L)     Mr. Johnson

Comments from Bob & food for thought...

The Building 1

 

The picture of the octagonal tower from the quad: the middle octagonal room was not H.J.S.Wilson's office, but was occupied as a classroom by "Duke" Wetherill for the whole of my time there. Duke occupied the octagon bit almost as a separate office and there was a low wooden partition with a shelf on which the tiny bits of paper that he got us to write on were piled. You were not allowed to pass this point unless he asked you to. Most of the time, he was sorting out major administration and was engrossed in this. Meanwhile, such as I, on the back row, would engage in tennis matches using screwed-up balls of the aforementioned paper. He also had a system of seating the class in mark-order according to the latest test : the top boy would be by the door - and would have to keep jumping up and down to open it and shut it as people knocked or left. The weakest would end up at the front, supposedly to receive more attention. Duke's vantage point also meant he had a clear view of the Quad, and could tap furiously on the window with a threepenny bit if any boy was spotted running in the Garden. Big Brother, nothing ! He also had a system of putting up a weekly picture from his collection, and drawing the class's attention to it. I saw quite a lot of this room as I was in 4A, under Chas Holmes, from 1961 to 1962, and we used it as a form room. The previous year, in 3A, when "Bod" Barnes was our tutor, we went there for Duke to teach us Latin. I remember queuing up on the main stairs (strictly one boy per step) waiting to go in the first time, and hoping against hope that I could make a go of it ! The glass eye was a bit of a useful device - you never knew whether Duke was looking at you or not, so it made you extra careful.

 

As for Mr. Wilson's office, I can recall going in there only four times, and three of them were not pleasant. I had to go and apologise on behalf of the Librarians who had been having a beaker battle one morning when the Head walked by ; I also had to stand while three hoodlums apologised to me for giving me a drubbing in Horninglow Road when their taunting forced me to lam out ; I went and presented my script for a school musical play and was received with interest ; and subsequently was called back to be told that the only master who might have produced it had replied to the Head that the thought of involving himself with anything concerning me made him want to vomit. I ended up having to apologise for not having been more enthusiastic about the bit part that this particular chap had tried to force on  me in "Coriolanus", which was never produced. Some old memories do not bring a glow, do they ? The script still exists....

 

Building 3

 

The picture of the bus stop is looking the opposite way from Stubbin Lane, contrary to the caption. The view is towards the junction with Longley Lane. The caretaker's house, with windows boarded up, is at the corner of Horninglow Road, and Barnsley Road is leading off in the direction of Firvale. The bus stop is where sub-prefects like me used to have to do bus-queue duty, as organised by the Head Boy (in my day, T.D. Copley and after him Alan Smith). How glad we were when the number 2 or 3 Circular bus used to turn up !

 

History 1 (I think)

 

I notice that Shiregreen has been misspelled as Sire Green. I lived there, so it would be nice to have it put right !

 

The Wells Tour

 

This is really excellent, and I learned things I never knew. It is also very comprehensive. It brought back the smell of the sand the cleaners used to spread on the floor before sweeping it, even !

 

Some thoughts :

 

Monday was definitely not House Assembly, because after Monday assembly, Years 1 and 2 used to remain in the Hall for a whole period's singing practice with Das Smith at the piano and Mr. Parry : nobody else. You can't imagine teachers being responsible today for 120 pupils each, now, can you ? The first years sang treble and the second years sang alto, so at least they had something new to tackle in their second year. Non-singers went elsewhere - probably to Spike Johnson's room, where conscientious objectors of various hues would be supervised during assembly (and possibly during RE lessons ?)

 

I recall house assembly was Tuesday. Being in Beatty we were always in the Hall for this. I had no idea where the other houses went. It was really run rather haphazardly by the House Prefects, and always seemed very makeshift. As it was always very sport based after the devotions were over I had practically no interest in it, but that was my fault !

 

Each form was allowed one line in the Hall, standing crammed shoulder to shoulder with our schoolbags at our feet : each form's title was painted on the floor by the wall bars, and each row was allocated a prefect whose job was to check that each boy had a hymn book. The penalty was probably detention during which the missing book had to be produced with its label denoting its possessor ! The Hall was a very spartan place to me, reared as I had been on the one at Hartley Brook Junior School. Nevertheless, this was the place for plays, and a temporary proscenium stage was laboriously erected every year for the main show. In 1958/59 this was "The Ghost Train", and I was amazed as a seedy station waiting-room took shape in front of us day by day. I also recall that, for the production of "Hobson's Choice", Mr. Page the woodwork teacher made a full-scale georgian bow window for the shop - I was so impressed I even told him so. Later, of cours, I got to tread the boards in a farce entitled the "Seventh Dungeon", in which I played a dotty character called Lord Falsgrave in 1964. Inevitably that was the name I got for the rest of my time there, at least on the corridors.

 

I felt sorry for Mr. Pascoe when I read of him. he was my first form tutor, in 1B, and sold me an Osmiroid fountain pen as part of a scheme. He had his quirks, apart from his Cornish accent : when getting us to label our exercise books he insisted that we write "Geog" rather than Geography, "Eng" rather than English, and so on. He spent more time telling us that it was to save time than the time we were supposed to be saving. He was the victim of some unfortunate practical jokes that we heard of later, some allegedly involving the ordering of huge coal deliveries to his address. I can't think what would have spurred anybody to be so beastly to such a mild-mannered chap, even though he thought lining up the class and smacking their palms with a ruler was a severe punishment. Perhaps he didn't seem tough enough and was therefore a deserving target ?

 

I feel sure the room between Doug Taylor's and the Library was home to Mr. Andrews, not Jammy Moorhouse, who had a room on the first floor in the Brushes building. Mr. Andrews was in charge of the Library, so needed to be close at hand. Doug Taylor, for the record, was reputed to be the toughest in the place barring the Head, and was known to make fifth-form toughs cry like babies with just a few well-chosen words. I was extremely wary of him, but his uncompromising methods got me 80% for O level Geography. It was not, incidentally, the highest mark, either !

 

Jammy Moorhouse taught 4A their Latin after Duke had grounded us all during our third year, and was indeed a disciplinarian but a wry one. One of our number was repeatedly earning impositions because of what Jammy called his "ostentatious sneezing". When another likely lad of our class vowed to earn 1,000 principal parts as an imposition during a single lesson, by being simply awkward, Jammy entered into the spirit of the whole thing and obligingly handed them out in batches of fifty at a time until it was getting near the end of the period, when the going rate increased. When he reached one thousand, the whole class cheered. Jammy winked at the practice of our selling pre-written principal parts (p.p.'s) at threepence for fifty. He didn't care so long as no principal part was repeated within each batch of a hundred. I also recall, that with his high desk standing by the cupboard, he could keep track of the Test Match by means of an inconspicuous earpiece attached to a transistor radio among the dusty text-books. I rather warmed to him : we thought he despised his nickname, but one day he nailed the tin lid off a jar of Moorhouses' Jam to the door of his room, with the legend "Its Fame is Spreading". But when in some Latin text we came across the words "jam istinc" (meaning something like "now close to you") he refused to see the joke at all as we fell about with laughter.

 

Wells says he never found out what the first door on that corridor was : well, it was the Staff Dining Room. I only ever got a peep in there, but I can still see it with its chairs lined up around a table, rather bare.

 

As to the Chemistry laboratory at the far end, it was a room I detested as I couldn't abide the subject and even more its - for me - catastrophic teacher. Mr. Kitchen's departure may have been before my own in 1965, but he was certainly still around in 1960 to make me stand outside by the door for reasons I simply cannot remember. It was probably all my fault, but it implanted in me a horror of Chemistry which still surfaces every time related questions come up on University Challenge ! We used to get his goat by spreading some substance which dried on the lab floor and produced explosive noises as the teacher paced around the room. On the subject of Chemistry, too, Alf Prince on the Science/Music wing used to terrify me with his way of juggling with brown glass flasks of Hydrochloric and Sulphuric acid, which used to stand unattended down the middle of the benches between the pupils on a strip of glass let into the woodwork. Health and Safety had not been dreamt-of at this stage. He also had an interesting way with Fire extinguishers, which he used to scare the pants off us as he demonstrated that little white crystals would form as the gas emerged into the atmosphere when they were let off.

 

I recall the precision with which the pupils' dining rooms were designated "left-hand dining room" and "right-hand dining room". I never dared go in the wrong one to find out what might happen....

 

The nickname for Icky Bown was once explained to us in the Sixth Form by the man himself. Apparently, in the early fifties, when Eisenhower  ("Ike") was seeking the Presidency, his supporters wore badges with the slogan "I Like Ike". Fun was made of this on the Archie Andrews radio show : Peter Brough made Archie learn to read, and got him to pronounce the topical slogan, but Archie made it come out as "I Licky Icky". How this made the jump to Mr. Bown is not so clear, but that was his explanation at the time. It just stuck, and he didn't mind it at all.

 

Boris Hayward had no chance to buy Russian text books off the shelf, so wrote them himself. They were not so much books as Gestetnered copies gripped in a strongly sprung Academy binder, and were very dog-eared. He had typed the stencils himself. I wonder if anybody ever got to smuggle one out, as I am sure they were pretty irreplaceable.

 

Spider McKay taught me English, whatever he taught Wells. In our third year it was our misfortune to have to work through complex sentence constructions - adverbial adjunctival clauses of purpose, and the like - and I rather lost my way. He was patient and receptive but indulged a lot of head-shaking on my behalf as I simply didn't seem to get it. I'm not sure I could do it even now.

 

"Spike" and "Spider" were apparently nicknames that stuck after both these teachers had organised some sort of "whodunit" activity with the School's two Scout troops : so "Spike" told us.

 

Mike Moore Photos

 

The picture of Daddy Machin's lab carries the information that it was N2. In fact, as Wells points out, N2 was in the front yard and was occupied by Cheesy Harrison. You can see that it is not N2 as, for one thing, the glassed-in corridor and quad are visible through the left-hand windows. I don't recall a suspended ceiling in my day - certainly after my time. I was never taught by Daddy, but he was revered by those who were, mostly. His vocal delivery was almost like a kind of chanting ("Second-shelf beaker, Wing !" sounding as though it came out of the Psalm Book), and his memorable remarks would be handed round 42-3 (the sixth form's unofficial common room except in period 4 when it had to be turned into a dining room) after lessons.

 

Dr. F. T. Wood's room was renowned as the hottest in the School because, being a slightly-built chap (the nickname "'Efty" was the wittiest in the School) he was susceptible to draughts and he would never allow a window to be opened even when the boys were melting into puddles where they sat. Pupils frequently dozed off in the middle of Paradise Lost or The Winter's Tale, but would wake up if a wasp (God knows how) got into the room : fearlessly, Efty would stride up and seize it by the wings, throw up the sash and cast it into outer Sheffield coldness before firmly shutting the window again. This never failed to impress. Efty also habitually stood with his back to a heating pipe that led down the wall from the floor in Duke's room, whence it gained entry via a hole that allowed the mischievous to drop torn up pieces of Duke's work paper through. At lesson change, pupils would see Efty leave his room with his gowned shoulders sporting two or three bits of this on regular occasions....

 

Finally, Mr. Parry, the Welshman Music teacher, was never called Herbert as far as I know. His namesake, the composer of "Jerusalem", was Hubert Parry, in any case. People in my immediate circle called him "Panj", which bore no connotations at all, but seemed to have much to do with his proper initials, P.J. But this may have been current only in a small circle. His music lessons in the lower school were either more intensive singing practice or copying notes about composers out of textbooks. I can only recall one lesson in seven years (if you include General Studies) where he played us an example of a composer's work. However, we heard a tape-recording of our performance for Speech Day at the Victoria Hall in 1958 - a total rarity in those days, including our (encored!) rendition of the Paul Robeson number "Oooh, my babby" sung by 240 boys' voices with perfect precision and two part harmony. He worked us hard and brought success and pride to our efforts. I wish I could get hold of that recording !

 

Hope you find this interesting...

 

Robert Wardle 15.09.07