MEMORIES OF CHURCH GREEN ROAD C. of E. SCHOOL
Here are recollections of four former pupils from the past, taken from “A Walk Round Old Bletchley”:
Mrs A. C. Knill - “In 1884 I started school. I had to cross two fields to get there. Cows grazed in these fields and were a hazard on dark winter afternoons. They seemed so large to a four year old.
“I had to take tuppence a week while I was in the Infants’ room, then fourpence a week when older. I cannot remember when these payments ceased.
“We all had to be in school before the bell in the tower stopped ringing. If we were not we had a black mark. There were only two rooms, one for the infants and one for all the rest, where two teachers taught at the same time.
“In the Infants’ room we sat on a gallery - a tiered platform - the new children at the bottom, the first years on the next rows and the bigger ones at the top.
“In winter time getting to school on time was a most difficult thing because there were so many frozen ponds just calling out for sliding. Persistent late-comers were caned, something which was never spared in my day.”
Miss W. Fisher - “I was always a nervous child and my memories of school are not pleasant. The Infant teacher, a local girl who was called a ‘pupil teacher’, was kind but it was when I went up into the ‘big’ room that troubles began. I was then seven years old, bewildered and frightened, so I cried. My punishment was to be sent back to the Infants’ room to sit among the newcomers on the gallery.
“I did not go to school after I was 12 because I was suffering from ‘nervous debility’, or so my report said.”
Mrs E. Gladwin - “On very cold frosty mornings, instead of being allowed to stay in the schoolroom as children are today at playtimes, we had to put on our outdoor clothes, line up in the playground, take hold of the coat tail of the child in front and then run as far as the thatched cottage at the end of the road and back, a distance of about half a mile. We were thus warmed up for our next lesson.”
Mr G. Chandler - “A typical Arithmetic lesson on a cold winter day - the Schoolmaster, Mr P (Sammy to us) - sat on the iron guard round the stove, cane nearby, watching his scholars like a hawk. We had been given a sheet of paper and a pencil each, the sums were on the blackboard, a whole board full and woe betide anyone who looked elsewhere besides the blackboard and the paper in front of him. After a certain time we were told to stop. Then we were called out to stand round the master, papers and pencils at the ready. He called out the answers, we ticked those we had correct and put a cross beside those which were wrong. He then collected the papers, tore them across and put them in the stove. End of Arithmetic lesson!”
“The only practical instruction we received was in gardening. For this we were marched to the schoolmaster’s garden where we were each given a plot which we had to dig, set, weed and tend as part of our education.”
