Spring Vale or Springvale?
It was always the two-word 'Spring Vale' up to modern times, and this website rigidly sticks to that tradition, although signage on the street generally uses the BMBC spelling. Here are some examples of the continuing use of the traditional 'Spring Vale' name, including this modern map shown here:
However, the modern trend is to join place-names together and 'Springvale' has caught on as a single word. New street names have adopted the BMBC name and we have 'Springvale Gardens' and the 'Springvale Community Garden' on their sign, so this battle to hold to tradition is all but lost. On top of that, standards are generally declining and good spelling is something of a lost art. The barbarians have taken over.
Things do change over time but I would say that the older form of 'Spring Vale' has much more charm. It refers to a dale with a spring in it. For someone like me, who is also a self-appointed member of the Apostrophe Police (among other things), it is a disappointment that a seemingly sloppy mistake is now the norm.
But how and why did it happen? The most likely answer is that it was a sign-writer's error or that the instructing BMBC council official who lived outside our area knew no better. When the old, red 'Spring Vale Depot' sign on Sheffield Road, Penistone became weathered and in need of replacement, perhaps in the 1980s or 90s, its shiny new replacement had the new 'Springvale' name - one word only.
Other two-word place-names are under threat from this Teutonic trend, glueing place-names together. Road signs for Bird's Edge and Crow Edge are still of two words but 'Birdsedge' is creeping into use and how long before Penistone's 'Bridge End' becomes just 'Bridgend' like the London district? It is the end of Penistone by Penistone Bridge. It already is 'Bridgend' in the semi-literate world of social media but too many of those on Facebook can't string a meaningful sentence together anyway. Us grown-ups and proper Penistonians should resist this sort of thing. Let's unwind this tyranny.
Spring Vale School
The school was opened 8th May 1909 on Sheffield Road, by Mr HJ Wilson, MP for Holmfirth Division, of which Penistone was then Head. The new school was described as 'A pleasant-looking building of grey stone.' It had a large central hall and five classrooms and had cost £3,800 to build. It could accommodate 300 pupils. Up to about 1959, it provided both Primary and Secondary education with the pupils spending their entire schooldays at the same school. After 1959, it became a Primary school only and the pupils would continue their secondary education at Penistone Grammar School.
The first Headmaster was Mr Walter Gledhill, who served in that post for 16 years to 1925. Educated at Barnsley Grammar School, he obtained a B Sc at Owens College, Manchester. His first teaching job was at Kings Road School, Wombwell before becoming Headmaster of the new Spring Vale School in 1909. In 1925, he became Headmaster of Doncaster Road Council School, Mexborough until he moved to the new Central School, Conisborough, which opened around 1929. He also became Headmaster of the Mexborough Technical School. He would go on to Conisborough Boys School, where he retired in 1947. See Mexborough and Swinton Times, 1928 and Conisborough and Denaby Main local history.
This view is from an old Penistone Almanack. The Headmaster's Study and Staffroom were in the middle and accessed from the hall. There's a gap in our knowledge here about Headmasters between 1925 and 1st Feb 1951, when Mr CGT Andrews became headmaster for many years, nicknamed 'Archie' by the pupils. He was formerly of Thurlstone School. The names of later headmasters until the school closed around 2005 have been lost to the mists of time.
The school would be demolished in 2007 to make way for the new school and also used the site of the former Penistone Working Men's Club which had been next door. This allowed the new school to enjoy a much larger area of land than before. The new school was officially opened on Monday 10th September 2007 by Penistone Mayor Cllr Joe Unsworth and Barnsley Mayor Cllr Len Picken, along with Head of the new school, Hilary Smith. Another important date would not be far away. The former Spring Vale School's Centenary Anniversary would be celebrated on Friday 8th May 2009 in the new school, an event that was well supported by local people.
These two pictures look from the left on the lft view and from the right on the right view, with the building fairly symmetrical.
Penistone Working Men's Club
The first Penistone and District Working Men's Club opened Saturday, 17th January 1925. Around 1950, another building was added at right-angles to the original. In the 1950s, the new section had been used as a cinema for navvies working on the Woodhead Tunnel. It was taken apart plank by plank and rebuilt in Spring Vale. That WMC building was painted green. Ultimately, as a wooden building, it became fairly rotten and particularly around the bottom edges. It needed to be demolished, which happened around 1958.
A new purpose-built WMC building was put up to replace the old one. That too was destined to be demolished in 2005, after nearly half a century of productive use. The 'new' building was not very pretty and always looked better on the inside but it was comfortable and very popular.
In its best times it was very successful, with good entertainment, cheap beers, comfortable seating and a big car park. The left side was a large function room/dance hall with a wooden floor and stage. The right side was the warm and comfortable lounge. There were toilets near the entrance and a 'Gents' in the lounge. A long bar reached all the way from one room to the other. I think that it could be opened out into one large room by moving a concertina dividing wall. This sad picture from 2004 shows Penistone WMC as a derelict building.
Here was the usual pattern of entertainment:
You can see that the main entertainment was at the weekends but there were other bookings such as the 'Heavenly Bodies' aerobics class, of which I was a member. You may stop laughing any time soon. Paul Kennedy reminds me that there was also a Bingo Night, which might have been on Thursdays and for a time there was a second Disco Night and that might have been Wednesdays.
The WMC also had a big community role that any older Penistonian will remember: the legendary 'Club Trips' to the seaside. These generally used charter trains from Penistone railway station. Former committee member Harry Walton says that at its peak there would have been two trains of up to thirteen coaches on each. You can imagine how many families would fit inside twenty six coaches. I recall an occasion when the train was too big for the platform and had to be drawn forward to fill the end coaches. Penistone was a ghost town on Club Trip days. The nearest modern equivalent is the Royal British Legion's Club Trips, with up to eight full bus coaches.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, Working Men's Clubs slipped into decline. Their image was old-fashioned and came across as cloth caps and bingo, as exemplified by the comedian Colin Crompton. His act was a WMC Club Secretary with a faulty microphone. Younger people were not attracted at a time when the membership itself was growing old. To encourage younger people, a pool room was installed in the lounge. Instead of attracting new members, the youths' general rowdiness put off some of the older members who only wanted a quiet drink with friends and family.
Penistone WMC had been popular but was in decline and, given its location, it wasn't helped by a more cautious attitude to drinking and driving. Then, in the 1990s, a new fad came along to put some wind back in the sails. Line Dancing had caught on and the function room started to fill up again. Unfortunately, line dancing and the club's popularity had declined too much and the end was in sight.
With stronger drink-driving legislation and factional in-fighting on the committee, everyone was pulling different ways and the end was in sight. Then the biggest set-back came along from which there was no return. Ground slippage caused structural stresses on the end of the building, needing around £35,000 for builders to put it right. That cleaned out the funds. Various deals were arranged with the brewery to keep things moving but eventually the debt was too much.
My Sunday visits also stopped being a pleasure. The bar service was usually alright but on occasions it went from 'poor' and 'downright rude'. According to information posted on the Archive Group Facebook, it closed in early 2001. It remained abandoned and boarded up until it was finally demolished in 2005. Now part of the new junior school is built on the site. See someone's Flikr Photo page.
(My thanks to Harry Walton, Paul Kennedy and others for their reminiscences on Penistone WMC).
The 2005 School Reunion
A Grand Reunion of alumni from before 1980 was held at the school on Saturday 22nd October 2005, not long before it closed for demolition. The event was a great success with good attendance. Old school pals met after many years and the hall was buzzing with a fine atmosphere of 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 is usual, more people knew me than I knew in return. I have always had a particular problem of recognising people whom I ought to know. Names and addresses went into a visitors book so that they might be invited to the opening of a new school, which would happen in 2007 (see above).
To an adult, the school hall appeared to be huge compared to the view as a child. At the 2005 reunion the hall seemed to be so very 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 parquet floor was the same as ever. In a side room, we were sipping wine at the very same old tables that I remembered from my schooldays there. They formed an octagon when pushed together. Modernity had visited Mr. Andrews' old classroom shown below, with its long tables and, what's this - data projector! And that means there was computer somewhere.
Schooldays Remembered
The reunion sparked many a dusty memory. We had proper winters then, with deep snow and icy conditions and nearly every kid walked unaccompanied to school. My brother-in-law kicked a ball all the way to school, down Victoria Street, Ward Street and Green Road, mostly using the red-brick wall of David Brown's (which had broken glass on top). Then as now, a lollipop lady would guide us across the zebra crossing with its flashing Bolesha beacons.
People looked out for each other more in those days. Nobody had a car and 'stranger danger' had not yet been invented. A few kids came on the Tracky bus but at times the snow was too deep and the bus might be cancelled. Some like me would only use a bus if they were late, for a fare that might have been 2d. In the playground, we would try to break the icy puddles with our scuffed shoes but lads our age did not really notice the cold, not even in those short trousers with blue knees. We were too busy running around.
As infants, we did 'Music and Movement' classes, exercising to music on a radio which was a big square wooden box. Trying to 'Become a Tree', for example. We always had a morning assembly with a prayer and a hymn or two and we had never heard of other religions in those days. We all knew something about Jesus and many of us went to Sunday School in our younger years. We were brought up with fairness and told to 'Do as you would be done by' as a rule to live by. Something to do with 'The Water Babies', I think, but good advice none the less. If we did wrong, we knew that it was wrong and that it would have consequences. Action and Reaction. Of course we always had excuses but were too young to know how transparent they were to a grown-up, who had heard it all before.
I always liked the Harvest Festivals. We would sing 'We Plough the Fields and Scatter the Good Seed on the Land, Where it is fed and Watered by God's Almighty hand. He sends the Snow in Winter, the Warmth to Swell the Grain, The Seasons and the Sunshine and Soft Refreshing Rain, etc.' A wonderful hymn. The children would be asked to bring some fruit or a can of food from home and a great pile of the contributions would accrue. But what happened to them, I don't remember.
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 but my eyesight was poor. It was a huge thrill. Our Christmas puddings always had sixpences baked in, with dire warnings not to choke on them. The 'tanners' were wrapped in a folded piece of greaseproof paper and were supposed to be silver thre'penny bits but those had by now become rare and collectable.
Names that come to mind in my class are: David Bailey, Trevor Hill, Kev McShane, Steven Fisher, Maurice Walsh, Stuart 'Titch' Tailor, Stephen Hattersley, Steven Fisher, Richard Penning and Stuart Mears. Remembering the girls' names is harder because they went always their own way and played together. Susan Brocklehurst taught me how to tie the shoelaces of my 'pumps' for PE and I'll bet that we were only six years old. Isn't it amazing to learn a life-long skill from someone so young. God bless you, Susan. I also remember Susan Zandrowicz and Carol Howard in the later years. I was a bit sweet on Susan and she really blossomed in later years.
Teachers that I recall were Miss Hague (or 'Nurse 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. And it worked. Most of the punishment was in the waiting and isolation from the rest of the class. Miss Howe was fairly strict but we all loved Miss 'Molly' MacKenzie, who was very pleasant and could knock out a reasonable tune on 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 was 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.
Miss Hague ('Nurse Haigh') was very old and delightful. She had grey hair in a tight bun and lived somewhere at the Hawley's end of Green Road. She looked after the first year and we all loved her. It was a special thing to be entrusted to pass her walking sticks to her from where they had been placed behind the water pipes. Above the pipes, on the front wall of Miss Hague's classroom was a very nice picture of a wooded hillside scene with a steam train puffing across from right to left. It might have been Scotland. I loved looking at it and would stand very close to it (nobody knew that I was very short-sighted). I wonder if my old classmates remember it.
We wore aprons for art sessions which were kept in a tall cabinet. Mine had a smoker's pipe embroidered on it (that would never be allowed these days). I wore my favourite Dan Dare braces in those days to hold up my short trousers above the knobbly knees which typically had a plaster on. An Englishman's braces held up his breeks, not his teeth. We had a small collection of books to prepare us for using libraries and my first book was 'The Vegetable Donkey', which I borrowed twice. I was confused by the procedure so I stuck to the familiar.
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 and nobody swore. The worst word imaginable might be "Bloody". The teachers made us do as we were told because they knew best and we didn't resent them for it.
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. It felt like a position of trust to be a Milk Monitor but I think it was done in turns. In winter, the milk would freeze and grow out of the bottles, pushing up the foil lid. This was common and the sparrows were bright enough to peck through the foil for a taste of frozen cream. Being mischievous urchins, me and Trevor Hill used to put the dregs from milk bottles into another one to fill it up. Then to our great amusement, someone would drink it.
In my last year at the school, the pupil's desk and chair was a single piece of furniture with a lifting lid and a proper bakelite inkwell. We used dip-in fountain pens in our last year to gain the best writing skills and an ink monitor would check that the inkwells were topped up. We also used jotter pads made of very thin and poor paper which tore easily using the dull pencils provided. The colour scheme of classrooms was much darker in the old days. The old tulip-shaped lampshades had become fluorescent lights but the windows were the same as ever in the 1950s, with a long wooden pole and S-shaped hook to open the top panes. The same tulip lights and windows were at St Paul's Sunday School in the same era.Children's Games at Spring Vale
As a little kid, I recall a very hot summer when the playground tarmac became sticky and pliable like the toffee in a Black Jack. Two grooves appeared in the playground tarmac at that time from a rocking horse or similar. I am fairly sure that those grooves persisted for fifty years or so until the new school was built. The wall at the bottom of the playground was 'a train' and it was a great occasion to be elected to be the driver. There was some sort of ill-defined hierarchy at work. On windy days, a line of us would open out our coats, join hands and let the wind take us running down the playground. There was a good place on the playground perimeter wall to climb up but the playground assistant or a teacher would always be watching out for that sort of thing.
Games of leapfrog, football, tag, marbles or British Bulldog were common. 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. The boys' urinal wall was the usual goal but some boys knew ways to anonymously baptise the goalie. The girls had the old favourites of jacks, hopscotch and various rhyming chants whilst skipping. They could skip in long lines along the rope. Chalked hopscotch boxes were quite common on pavements around the housing estates. Ah, nostalgia is not what it used to be.
Please also see this Spring Vale Tour Page.
Rodney Dangerfield: 'My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.'