Last updated on 18 August 2019
As l remember, the school was split into two groups – the older children and the younger children. The younger children had a classroom behind and attached to the main room. I always thought that the school was situated where there would normally be a garage! I hasten to add that it was a properly built school building – not just a garage!! There were two small cloakrooms just inside the door and then it was straight into the main room. On a few occasions we were taken into the garden to the right of the classroom to paint outdoors. The playground was immediately in front of the school building i.e. the drive alongside Mrs Wayman’s bungalow. We saw Mr Wayman and their son, Hugh, only occasionally.
During the summer we were taken, crocodile fashion, up Tollerton Lane to the field on the right, just before Medina Drive. We played rounders here. This field had an enormous horse chestnut tree, under which we sat in the shade. I think that the tree has long gone. The Bloor family lived opposite this field.
On checking Dad’s accounts, it seems that the total sum paid to Mrs Wayman for my education from 5 to 11 years was approximately £121.3s.0d. (That would be from 1949 to 1955). In October 1950 he paid £6.13s.8d and in February 1951 another sum of £6.12s.6d. He went on paying in, roughly October and February each year until March 1955 when the sum had risen to £11.8s. 6d. I am afraid that the cost of the school fees seems to have been quite a large item in the monthly accounts. On top of the fees would have been the cost of uniform etc. And then l failed the 11 plus!
I was sent to the school because Mum and Dad were not sure about the standard of the village school in Plumtree, which would have been the alternative. Plumtree Primary School is now in a very different proposition, but still on the same site in the village.
I can remember Mum walking along the main road from Normanton, pushing my trike, to meet me from school. I can also remember waiting for the Stathern bus by the two shops (a butcher and grocery shop l think) at the end of Tollerton Lane. I bought my sweets there, with coupons of course! Then walking home from the Clipston Lane corner. The shops have long been a restaurant.
I have an original copy of the 1952 school photograph that appeared in the August and September 2017 issue of the Tollerton Village Newsletter, but unfortunately there are no names recorded on my original copy. I have racked my brain to put names to faces and have managed to recall a few (see below). I’m afraid l have long since lost touch with any of the others in my class. However, l recall a Marie Hebb, who was older than me. She assisted Mrs Wayman with the younger children, but l think she was also a pupil. I believe l am right in saying that Valerie Lewitt was the only child to pass the 11 plus in the year in which l took it.
Names that I can remember:
Mrs Wayman
Back row: ? ? Marie Hebb; Barbara Lewitt; Judith Hornby; ?
Second to back row: Geoffrey ?; Robert Trapp; ? ? Ann Boyce; Susan Hodgett; Wendy ?; Richard Savage
Second row from front: Mary-Lois Wakerley; ? ; Nadya Fraser; Judith Beacher; Valerie Lewitt; Neville Barnard; Richard Knight; Jill Prentice; Josephine Hull
Front row: ? Dennis Cartwright; Edward Burroughs; Richard Ireton; ? ? Richard Bloor; ? ? Bridget Hornby
Many thanks to Jill Booth, nee Prentice, for sharing these memories