Spring Vale Junior School
The 2005 Reunion
These pictures are from a reunion at the old school in 2005, not long before it was closed ready for its demolition. The grand reunion of Spring Vale alumni from before 1980 was held at the school on Sat. 22nd October 2005. It was a great success with good attendance. Old school pals met after many years and the hall was buzzing with conversation and laughter. A buffet with wine and hot drinks helped it along nicely and there was a good raffle organised by Gladys, the ex-lollipop lady. All visitors wore name tags and, as usual, more people knew me than I knew them.
Visitors wore name-badges and it was good to put names to faces. A visitor's book collected names and addresses and this was to be used to invite people for the opening of the new school. Up to about 1959, pupils spent their entire schooldays at the school, both primary and secondary levels, all rolled into one school. After that, it became a primary school only. The old school was opened in 1909.
The 100 Years Anniversary Event
During 2006 to 2007, the new school was being built on the same site and on land belonging to the old Working Men's Club next door. The new school was officially opened Monday 10th September 2007 but another important date was not far away. Spring Vale School's 100th Anniversary was celebrated at an event on Friday 8th May 2009 at the newly rebuilt junior school and it was well supported by local people. In 2010, a DVD has been produced and, at the time of writing (May 2010), it has been sent for the mass production of three hundred copies. these will probably sell for about £5 each.
Reminiscences
The hall used to be huge when I was a child but at the 2005 reunion it seemed to be small. The chairs were small too. I don't know what happened to the old wooden clock in the hall but it was an important feature in the old days. I saw that the hall's parquet floor was the same as ever. In the side room, we were sipping wine at the old tables that I remembered. They made an octagon when pushed together.
Modernity has visited Mr. Andrews' old classroom shown above, with its long tables and data projector. In my final year, the pupil's desk and chair was a single piece of furniture with a lifting lid and inkwell. We used dip-in fountain pens in our last year for the best writing and an ink monitor would fill the inkwells. We also used jotter pads of poor paper which tore easily using the pencils provided. The colour scheme was much darker in the old days. The old tulip-shaped lamps are now fluorescent lights but the windows are the same as ever, with long wooden pole and S-shaped hook to open the top panes..
As an infant, we did 'music and movement' classes, exercising to music on the radio, which was a big square wooden box. 'Become a tree', for example. A pretty girl called Susan Brocklehirst taught me to tie the shoelaces of my 'pumps'. We always had a morning assembly with a prayer and a hymn or two and we did not have the strange or alien religions in those days. We were told to 'Do as you would be done by' as a general rule to live by. Something to do with 'The Water Babies', I think, but good advice none the less.
Delightfully, old Miss Hague (Nurse Haigh) had grey hair in a tight bob. She looked after the youngest kids and it was a special thing to be trusted with her walking sticks, parked behind the water pipes. We had a small collection of books to get us used to the idea of a library. My first book was 'The Vegetable Donkey', which I borrowed twice. We had aprons for art sessions and mine had a smoker's pipe embroidered into it. There was a picture on the front wall of a wooded hillside scene with a steam train puffing across, that I loved looking at. I wonder if my old classmates remember it. I wore my favourite Dan Dare braces in those days to hold up my short trousers. An Englishman's braces are on his breeks, not his teeth.
I always liked harvest festivals. We sang 'We plough the fields and scatter....' and would bring fruit or a tin of food from home. A great pile of the contributions would accrue. Christmas was a time of great excitement and anticipation, especially for the younger ones. We were told that Father Christmas was coming and some kids 'saw' him arrive. I never did. It was a huge thrill but I don't remember if I received any presents. Our Christmas puddings always had sixpences baked in, with dire warnings not to choke on them.
We were much more able to be children in those days and a lot of what we did was playful. We loved the brightly-coloured powder paints and drawing. As a very young child, I remember doing arithmetic using cards with numbers on them and we could learn to tell the time using little clock faces, where the teacher could move the hands. Of course there were some punishments for doing wrong and they might hurt but mostly it was hurt feelings. We learnt right from wrong, not to be selfish and that we could not always have our own way. Some of it stuck.
We had proper winters then, with deep snow and icy conditions and nearly every kid walked it to school. A few kids came on the tracky bus and at times the snow was too deep for the bus to get through. I liked to be a milk monitor, with the third-of-a-pint milk bottles stacked up in crates by the door to the infants' playground. In winter, the milk would freeze and grow out of the bottles, pushing up the foil lid. We would try to break icy puddles with our scuffed shoes but we did not really feel the cold, even with short trousers.
I recall a very hot summer when the playground tarmac became sticky and I think there are still two lines in it to this day that were put there by a classmate on a rocking toy of some sort. The wall at the bottom of the playground was 'a train' and it was a great occasion to be elected to be the driver. On windy days, a line of us would open out our coats, join hands and let the wind take us running down the playground. I forgot to check if the playground perimeter wall had the same footholds for climbing up that I remember.
Games of leapfrog, football, tag, marbles or British Bulldog would be normal. British Bulldog had something to do with taking turns to break through a line of kids. The fastest runners were the most successful as they had more momentum. Nobody wanted to be the goalie at football, as it was the same wall as the boys' urinal and some of them had good pressure. The girls would play jacks, hopscotch or various rhyming chants whilst skipping.
Teachers that I recall were Miss Hague, Miss MacKenzie, Miss King, Miss Makin (later to be Miss Rowley), Miss Howe and headmaster 'Archie' Andrews, who had only a tenuous grip on his false teeth. The headmaster's study was always too hot in both senses. Mr Andrews' favourite punishment was the slipper for the worst offences and he would keep you waiting to build up tension and anxiety. Miss Howe was fairly strict but we all loved Miss 'Molly' MacKenzie, who was very pleasant and could knock a reasonable tune out of the piano. She went to local cricket matches and lived at Viewlands. Mrs. Bullivant watched over us in the playground and I wonder if she was also the dinner lady
who made me eat my
meat. It was always full of gristle and hard to cut. That might have been my original inspiration for vegetarianism, as I'm sure that I did not get it from Adolf Hitler or Socrates.
Please also see this tour page.
These pictures are from a reunion at the old school in 2005, not long before it was closed ready for its demolition. The grand reunion of Spring Vale alumni from before 1980 was held at the school on Sat. 22nd October 2005. It was a great success with good attendance. Old school pals met after many years and the hall was buzzing with conversation and laughter. A buffet with wine and hot drinks helped it along nicely and there was a good raffle organised by Gladys, the ex-lollipop lady. All visitors wore name tags and, as usual, more people knew me than I knew them. 
