1944

I was born towards the end of the war, and for the first six months of my life I lived in Appleton Wiske, the daughter of a farm worker and a Thornaby-born land girl who had a job on the same farm - the Manor Farm in Great Smeaton. It was fate that threw mum and dad together – mum’s men friends didn’t return from the war and her life had moved on.

Our life took a dramatic turn when dad rented an isolated farm at the top of Carlton Bank. Mum had no say in the matter, and so we ended up in a cold, damp farmhouse with no electricity and no indoor toilet! It was so cold you put a coat on to go upstairs. Life must have been hard, but I have happy memories of my childhood there. There were no other children to play with, but I had the animals and my dolls and a little wooden horse on wheels. I never had a bike – there was nowhere to ride one. The farm was on the hillside and the only level bit of ground was the few stone flags at the back of the house. (learning later, in my thirties, was a painful experience!) Feeding the calves and hens and collecting the eggs were easy jobs that I could do.  I knew where the first primroses grew, and the ‘milkmaids’ down by the pond, the pond that was full of frog spawn in spring. Mum would have had a fit if she had known that I was playing by a pond. The bracken was taller than I was and mum couldn’t keep track of me all the time.

1950

We had a mile to walk across the fields for the taxi to Chopgate School. Horizontal rain and sleet, and snow over my welly tops were the order of the day when I started school – I have a November birthday. In those days you just got on with it, nowadays you would probably have a day off! Clothes were dried by the huge coal fire in a corner of the classroom. I cannot remember how it happened, but one day I was asked if my mum was a teacher – I said ‘yes’. Before mum was a land girl, she had worked in a school ‘minding’ one class while the head teacher set another class off with their work, then they swapped over classes. Someone from County Hall suggested mum trained as a teacher, but money was too tight. The money from selling our milk was the main source of income, and the farmer’s wife had the egg money - no eggs, no food! Mum always made sure she had a good stock of flour and sugar in the house, so that she could make bread if necessary, and make jam from the damson trees in the orchard and the blackberries that grew in profusion in the hedges. We killed a pig every year so we always had bacon and cured ham.

Soon mum was asked to work at the school in the infant class and I had to move ‘up’ early because I would not do as I was told. I wouldn’t unpick all my sewing and do it again properly! I’m sure I went on to enjoy school, and played schools with my dolls when I was at home….a sign of things to come.

I think I was about eight years old when we got electricity at the farm and I can remember mum’s excitement at using her first electric oven – a baby Belling I think it was. We had two ranges, but one was fairly useless, and the huge one in the back kitchen got so hot you could bake with the oven door wide open. That one was only used on threshing days when mum was catering for a lot of hungry men. I say mum because I was not very domesticated, and was very reluctant to help in such matters. I would rather go to the ‘far fields’ for rabbit food – the further away the better. Up until then, mum had done the cooking in a paraffin oven – a cubic foot sized tin oven on a paraffin stove. (There is one at Beamish just like it). I still wasn’t much of a cook when I got married! Dad got an electric milking machine which speeded up that process no end, though it did land him in hospital when the electricity supply failed one day, and he started the engine with a starting handle, which flew off when the engine fired, catching dad in the eye. Quick action by mum and our neighbour getting him to hospital saved his sight in that eye. By this time also, Bonnie, the farm shire horse, was having life a bit easier when dad got a tractor. Bonnie had single footedly kept the farm going and we would have been in a sorry state without her. (She had been given to us by some kind soul when we moved up there)

Schoolwork was getting serious for me in my last year at Chopgate. I had to sit the ‘eleven plus’ exam, and what’s more, I HAD to pass it. If I hadn’t, I would have had to go to school at Stokesley and lodge – we couldn’t get to Chopgate in time for the bus to Stokesley what with having to get the milking done and get it across the fields to the road for collection.

Two boys and two girls sat the test – the girls passed.

1956

Then we had to choose a school – it had to be a boarding school. Mum eventually chose The Convent of the Ladies of Mary, at Scarborough – I think it is the only convent slap bang in the middle of a town. The other girl also went to the convent. In all, I think four girls from Chopgate School went there. You could feel the building shake when the buses went over the drain hole! Being in a town was completely alien to me, and what with that, and being away form home for the first time, it was not altogether a happy time. Dad would rather I’d stayed at home to work on the farm, and when, at the interview, I told the Reverend Mother that I wanted to work with horses, I suppose I was lucky to get a place! I used to console myself with the thought that the moon I was watching (and reading by in bed) was the same moon shining down on the farm and mum and dad. The boarders had to go for a walk after tea and before homework and we always wanted to go to the marine drive, especially if we could hear the breakers crashing over it. The nun with us must have had her heart in her mouth most of the time. Another favourite walk was to the swings at the castle. We had to walk two by two to the lamp post, and then we could RUN! (Ladies don’t run!) When we were out in town we always had to wear full uniform, and the nuns knew when someone had broken that rule. How did they do that?

It was a long time between holidays. I didn’t always go home at half terms as they were just long weekends. It wasn’t worth all the bus fare money and the hassle. Life at the farm went on as normal, but I was only a small part of it now. Mum was still teaching and that kept us going. My only expenses at school were the laundry bill and piano lessons. Piano lessons were a boon when you didn’t want to play hockey or partake in some other unpalatable sporting activity! I have always felt grateful for the chance I was given for a good education, but feel that, over the ensuing years, I have repaid the cost through diligence and hard work with the hundreds of children I have taught.

1961

Years went by routinely and it was soon time for O levels. I wanted to be a teacher –

all those years teaching my dolls to read did it!- but I hedged my bets to be a vet, so I needed Latin. I had a flair for languages, and after one year I had dropped the sciences, except biology, in favour of French and Spanish. I passed five O levels at the first attempt, topping my class in Spanish and Biology – enough to get me into teacher training college in those days, and passed English Literature in the November resit. I knew when I walked out of the exam hall that I had failed it – I had done a whole question wrong! I had compared two poems by the same author, when it was supposed to be different authors, because we had done the same essay in class. Read the question at least twice, Sandra! I had passed Latin, but I’m sure it was only because I had walked round and round the tennis courts learning the translation by heart. I needed Latin A Level to be a vet, so I did French and Latin at A Level. The really clever girls took three. You didn’t take as many subjects then as now – were they harder to pass? – I think so.

1963

The winter of 1963 was the cause of me not sitting A Levels at all, but instead, going out to teach in the convent’s Prep. school for the length of the summer term and being given two five pound notes by Reverend Mother. I was so proud of those! I also came away with a good reference. 1963!  Boxing Day. We always went to Thornaby to see mum’s sister, Aunt Nell, on Boxing Day, and on this particular day it was snowing quite badly. Our neighbour helped us out again – the old car couldn’t cope with the snowy track between the farm and the road, and he towed us out. When we arrived back that night we had to leave the car at the roadside and walk home. We did not get out again until Easter. You have difficulty finding enough snow ploughs to clear the village roads of snow these days, but back then we had a snow blower in the dale every day. It would clear the road by day and the wind would fill it again at night – it was a never-ending struggle. The fields were blown bare, and dad took our milk to Chopgate with horse and sled. The stupidest thing I ever did was burn the diary I had kept of that winter!

I enjoyed teaching at the prep school, and I was marking children’s work while the other borders were doing their homework. While doing that, I also took two more O Levels on my own, meaning that I ended up with a respectable eight. I was four months off my nineteenth birthday when I left school and the next year was to be the last at the farm.

I hadn’t got into college – I think I had been away from home for so long I didn’t want to go even further away. I can remember going to Bedford for an interview – the first time I had been out of Yorkshire! Teachers were in short supply and I was given a job by the North Riding Education Committee, as it was then. I went to a school in Guisborough for a fortnight’s observation, lodging with one of the teachers. My test was to give a lesson to a junior class with the class teacher out of the room, then she had to come back in while I went out, and discuss my lesson. If the children had grasped what I taught them I would pass. They had! I had done a lesson on why deciduous trees lose their leaves. I still have the wonderful book I got my blackboard drawings from. That set me up nicely for a job in a reception class in Grangetown! I was living with my aunt Nell in Thornaby, but apart from dropping the goldfish on the floor, I cannot remember much about that year. (The fish survived!)

By this time I had been granted a place in a new college in Middlesbrough, opened to take mature students to help with the teacher crisis. They wanted me to study art, as my main subject was going to be Art and Craft and I only had an O Level. I got a place at Art College for a year, and asked for a transfer to another school to help with the travelling. I moved to Newcomen Infants’ School in Redcar, and got myself a cheap bedsit. Redcar was a great place then. I got an evening job in a coffee bar which opened on to the sea-front, serving hot dogs through the window hatch, and later, one at Pacitto’s Ice Cream bar on the front and on the Stray. Come Friday night, after work, it was off to the Pier Ballroom for a bit of 60’s rock and roll. It’s not there any more!

There was always a PE course in Scarborough in the Easter Holidays and my head teacher, Miss Snow, thought I would benefit from going. Considering I hadn’t been to college, she was probably right! In those days, HMIs – Her Majesty’s Inspectors – would drop into schools unannounced, and on one particular day, he thought I would learn more if he took my PE lesson while I observed. He was not wrong! So off I went to Scarborough. The course I wanted to do, Primary Games, I think it was, was undersubscribed so it was suggested I tried the swimming. I had not learned to swim at school. The outdoor pool at Scarborough was always FREEZING – how can you learn to swim in that? By the end of the week I could swim a length and everyone embarrassed me by clapping. By chance I discovered another teacher on the course lived at Richmond and I asked him for a lift home. That was the beginning of a friendship that turned into marriage, and here we are forty years and two children (adults) later. Mum and dad had left the farm by this time and were back in Great Smeaton, mum teaching in the Primary School and dad back farm-working. Our farm sale day was a sombre occasion – I hated seeing all our animals leave the farm.

1965

My three years at college were uneventful – I enjoyed the art, although I kept having nightmares for years afterwards that my end of course display wasn’t going to be ready and the art room was in a garret up hundreds of stairs! I played for the college netball team. I remember there was a lot of spare time. The course had just gone from two years to three, and I’m sure everything was just spun out to fit the time. A lot of us passed the test to see if we could do the BEd. but some decided we would never make up in salary the year we ‘lost’ in doing it. I passed the test but didn’t do the course. I was keen to get back into teaching.  After my second year at college, we got married – we had a house, so it seemed sensible. My display was ready in time after a huge effort – paintings, sculptures, pottery, textiles and a table with a top made of pebbles from the beach! Why did I do that?  During my interview at County Hall for my first proper job I was told that if I was half as good a teacher as my mum I would do well. I hope I have come close. Mum was the only unqualified teacher on County’s list of teachers, and she wasn’t given Qualified Teaches Status until about two years before she retired. That must be the longest teaching practice in the world!! She was highly thought of in County Hall, and members of the Education department went to her retirement party. She is living with us now, aged ninety one, but is not in the best of health, and cannot remember much about the tough life she has had. Maybe that is a blessing.

1968

My first job was in the Reception class at Colburn Primary School. I walked into

the classroom on my first morning, looked in the cupboard…. and what do you think I found? – a shirt box full of cotton reels – the only thing no-one else could find a use for. The classroom had been ransacked. No pencils, no paper, no books…….and to cap it all, the head teacher at the time had taught me when I was at Chopgate!! There was nothing on the walls, and I can remember painting some giant pictures of Janet and John, from the reading scheme at the time, to try to brighten the place up. I managed to get myself in the local paper because I had four or five sets of twins in the class. The teacher in charge of the infants had told me when I arrived not to try to teach the children anything. NOT TO TRY TO TEACH THEM ANYTHING?? That might be the only bit of teaching advice I have ever ignored, but ignore it I did, and I passed my probationary year there.

1969

I missed the very end of that year at Colburn school with yellow jaundice, and it was while I was off work with that, that Canon Ledgard of Bedale and Leeming Bar came to see me. A teacher was needed at Leeming Bar school and would I like to move there? Well, yes I would – we were living there and I was getting a lift to Colburn with a friend who worked on the Garrison – we couldn’t afford to run two cars, so I accepted the position and was very happy there. I was teaching the middle class of three until the school had to lose a teacher, then I taught the first class. At the Easter of 1971 I had to leave as I was expecting my first baby. In the meantime we had purchased a derelict ‘house’ in Ellerton-on-Swale. It had been uninhabited for twelve years and was open to ‘les belles etoiles’. There were swallows’ nests on the meat hooks on the wooden beams, and when we had put the windows in, the swallows tried to peck the putty to get in! We had been going there after work as we were doing a lot of the work ourselves. It had almost a half-acre plot overgrown with blackberries, and with a lot of hard graft and a stout strimmer, we gradually turned it into a garden which, with the help of a large freezer, kept us in a variety of fresh fruit and veg.

The Pre-School Playgroups Association - PPA - was taking off in a big way, and I started looking into the possibility of running a playgroup in Scorton. The paperwork etc. inevitably took ages, and my second baby was nine months old by the time Scorton Playgroup opened, in May, 1974. It opened with just five children, but word soon spread and numbers rose. Monthly meetings were held in Northallerton. Each area of the Northallerton Branch had a Playgroup ‘Visitor’. This was mostly an advisory, keeping-in-contact kind of role, but I enjoyed visiting the different playgroups in the Richmondshire area. I was elected Chairman of the Branch for a year and I had to quickly learn the art of public speaking. (oh dear- split infinitive)

1975/6

It was round about now that I thought I should tell County Hall of my change of address, which I did, and shortly after, they contacted me to see if I could go to Brompton-on-Swale Primary School three afternoons a week – one afternoon with each of the three classes. I arranged childcare at home – mum had retired by now – and went back to work. Although my husband was a Head of Department, my small job kept our children off the ‘free dinners’ list! There was a certain amount of supply teaching also, which meant I could no longer run the Playgroup, so, sadly, I had to leave. It is still there, as Scorton Pre-School and it is gratifying to know that I started the chain of events that lead to its being.

After I had been at Brompton a few years, a new school was built – the move from old to new was a mammoth task. My job there was still part-time and I wanted a full-time job. Unfortunately, these were the ‘redeployment’ years, when you could only apply for a post if your school was overstaffed and Brompton was growing, with the building of two or three housing estates. When a full time position arose at the school we had to have a teacher from a small school up the dale that had to lose a teacher. That phase eventually passed, and I was given a full time position at Brompton. Being a pianist (not brilliant but adequate – I gave up lessons at school to concentrate on O Levels and didn’t take them up again) I taught a lot of music, and the new Headteacher wanted all the juniors to learn recorder. It was a bit hard on the ears, but it meant that children who picked up the descant quickly could go on and learn treble and tenor recorders. There was soon an excellent recorder ensemble group in the school. I also started to teach guitar – I had bought a guitar at College, but it was the first thing to go when I left – when the teacher who normally did it went on maternity leave and did not return.– it meant I had classes after school every afternoon as recorder lessons in school time had stopped by now. It also meant I had to teach myself the chords, thus managing to keep one step ahead of the children – just. But it was fun – not as serious as recorders! Another instrument I hugely enjoyed playing was the organ in the church. The Carol Service always filled the church and I was not an organist! I got permission to practice, and pulled out more stops as I got the hang of it. It sounded great to me but I don’t know what it sounded like to the congregation! No-one complained! I was filled with panic when I looked in the little mirror and saw how full the church was! Organ playing eventually became redundant with the advent of cassettes and CDs.

My main responsibility while at Brompton-on-Swale was being made the Maths Co-ordinator with the advent of the National Curriculum. I had spent all one summer holiday hunched over the kitchen table making maths games and that was my ‘reward’. It is probably the one I would have chosen anyway, given the chance to choose. I was also asked to be the Music co-ordinator as well probably because I could play the piano.

I was musical in my private life. I enjoy singing and joined the local Ladies’ Choir. We entered the Wensleydale Tournament of Song for many years and won quite a few times. We soon became a Music Society, with the addition of a few tenors and basses and began a tradition of putting on one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas every year, as well as the usual Carol Concerts and the occasional ‘French Evening’ for local charities. It was all jolly good fun – and something to look back on, now that we are all ‘of a certain age’ and not singing any more.

I joined the North Yorkshire Chorus – I think I know Verdi’s Requiem by heart – and was able to go with them to sing in Kuopio, Finland.

My biggest claim to fame is that I have sung on the same stage as the late, great Pavarotti. A group of ladies from the Chorus – three of us from Ellerton – joined ‘The World Festival Choir’ but I was able to sing in only one of their concerts, being the only one in school holidays. We were to sing the Requiem in the amphitheatre in Verona, Italy, and Pavarotti was the tenor soloist. England was the latest country to join the choir, so we were right up on the highest steps, and Pavarotti was a speck down in the distance. To say it was a fantastic experience does not do it justice!

I found out the next day that Princess Diana had been in the audience.

The rest of the family were settled in their schools, and I was happy to stay where I was, and so it was that I retired from Brompton-on-Swale in July 2004.

When I entered the profession I thought it would be nice to be the head of a village school, but as time went on, head teachers were more and more concerned with blockages of toilets, heaps of paperwork and other mundane stuff and I could see that if I wanted to teach, I would have to stay at the ‘chalk face’. Trying to be a good Maths. Co. was challenge enough.

Since retirement I have done a lot of supply teaching – I still enjoy seeing the dawning of understanding on a child’s face, and if children want to learn, then I still want to teach!