We always used to walk to school. My first school was Tudor Road infants school, which is still there and now, I think, called Woodhall school. I don’t remember who my first teacher was, but I do have a few memories from there. There were benches and coat pegs outside each classroom, and we had to hang up our coats and take off our outdoor shoes when we arrived, certainly if it was bad weather and we’d walked in wellingtons. We wore black plimsolls; everybody had the same, no fashion brands or competition. There were alphabet friezes around the classrooms (a is for apple, no phonics), and the tables were trapezoid – two tables together made a hexagon, and four or five children would sit in groups at each one.
I met children who were my friends and classmates throughout my childhood: Tanya Wicks, Celia (Ceci) Alderton, Janet Bird, and Jayne Cooper. We had to go outside every playtime, unless it was pouring heavily with rain, in which case the whole school would be in the school hall. In the playground we’d run around, play singing circle games or hopscotch, skipping games, or sometimes climb on the climbing frame. If it was cold, we’d huddle together in groups. There were “dinner ladies” in the playground, non-teaching staff who were on duty to keep an eye on us, and they nearly always had a string of children holding their hands. The school backed onto fields of wheat and you could see for miles across to Chilton. The Upper School and Springlands estate weren’t yet built, so the school was on the very edge of Sudbury.
At 9 years old, I went to junior school at North Street. We walked to the North Street school via the alley that ran along the side of our house and came out in Girling Street. There was a lollipop man or lady to help us cross, as that was a busy road, even when it ended at East Street, before the “curly-wurly road” extension was built through to King Street. The school was demolished just a few years ago.
The headmaster was Mr Reed, and my class teacher was Mrs Loades. Celia and Tanya were still in the same class, and Garry West, Gary Diggins, and Kevin Risley are the boys I remember from there. Celia had an enormous collection of “trolls” which she used to bring to school occasionally. Once or twice I went to her house to play; she lived in a big old Victorian house along Cornard Road, next to the “dandycord” factory (now Sainsbury’s). The house had a feeling of size and space, cool and dark and very still.
At that school, we had assembly every day, and we sat cross-legged in rows on the wooden parquet floor to listen. Assembly often included music; selections from classical LPs played on a record player, with some explanation from a music teacher about the composer and what he (always he) was trying to convey. Together with these music spots, and a lesson called Music and Movement, I learned a little about music and heard some pieces that I still love: Peer Gynt – In the Hall of the Mountain King (Grieg), Fingal’s Cave (Mendelssohn), and the Pastoral Symphony. Later, my love of ballet added more favourites, in particular, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet with its magnificent Dance of the Knights.
Mrs Loades was my class teacher and my English teacher at North Street. She allowed and encouraged us to play with the language, and we wrote poems in her class which we illustrated. I know she thought I was good at English, and she was always full of praise. Many, many years later, after I’d moved to Turkey, Mrs Loades met Mum in the street and stopped to chat. They arranged to meet again, and at that meeting Mrs Loades gave Mum a large brown envelope with about a dozen of my childhood poems in it; she’d kept them for all those years.
http://www.sudburysuffolk.co.uk/photoarchive/viewimage.asp?id=1210
The link takes you to a photo of a weaving class in North Street School in 1968, and although I can’t identify myself or any others, I must have been there around that time. Sudbury was and still is a major weaving town, and is especially famous for its silks. I don’t know if that’s why we learned weaving, or if it was part of a national curriculum! We had lots of arts, crafts, and expressive, creative lessons – country dancing was another favourite, and here we are dancing in the extensive gardens of the old vicarage in Gainsborough Street.
Fading Memories 