Tag Archives: 1930s

Jean Maitland: Early Days playing at the Castle

Wheatsheaf Lane

Wheatsheaf Lane 1930s

My mother used to do the washing for the Simpsons at North House and I used to have to take the washing back down the steps to the big kitchen.

When I lived in the Square we used to play up the Castle and in Wheatsheaf Lane; that was our play area because there were no cars or anything like that. You could go up to the Castle anywhen you liked. We used to love going up there because you could frighten one another to death in the dungeons, and if anyone shut the door you could hear them scream right across the town.
Jean Maitland nee Levey b 1928

Pat Burt: The army children from Fort Victoria

The children from Fort Victoria were very poor, and we were scared of them; they were army children. We were poor but we were dressed all right. They used to have sticks and hit everybody. They were tough, we didn’t like them. They used to walk all the way from Fort Victoria in the morning and then go home at lunchtime, and back again for the afternoon session.

I used to wonder how they got home in time to have their lunch and get back in time for school. We could go home for lunch, not far to go, a couple of hundred yards.
Pat Burt nee Adams b 1929

Pat Burt: Starting school, and the school dentist 1930s

I started school one month after I was three – I missed my brothers and sisters so my mother took me to start school. I loved it! I remember there being 74 children on the school roll.

Friday afternoons, if you did well, as a treat you could go round to the rocking horse which was really big, like a galloper at a fair.

School dentist
That also brought back not such good memories because it was in the room the school dentist used. That was terrible ! They used to bring round bright yellow forms to fill in and as soon as I saw these forms I would start feeling afraid.

The dentist’s name was Mr Cartwright and his hand shook; it wasn’t his fault, he suffered from shellshock. To have him as a school dentist was entirely the wrong thing. He operated the drill with a wooden treadle, his foot on the treadle when he started to drill.

His nurse used to say, “Don’t be so stupid! Sit still there”.
‘Its hurting me!’
‘No it’s not.’

I used to be so scared when my turn came. Jim Jupe, when it was his turn to be sent to the dentist, he went home, but I wouldn’t have dared; I’d have been sent back.
Pat Burt nee Adams b 1929

Colin Smith: School days

I was never any good at anything at school except drawing.

Colin Smith b 1921, who in 1949, with his brother Stanley, sailed the Nova Espero, a 20 foot boat they had designed and built, across the Atlantic from Nova Scotia, in 43 days. They did this without chronometer, bunks, lifejackets….in what remains one of the smallest boats to cross the Atlantic.

The arrival of the Smith brothers in Yarmouth harbour in 1949

Boats greeting the Smith brothers in Yarmouth Harbour after their 43 day Atlantic crossing in 1949 ; photo Sue Russell

Jean Maitland: School days

I always felt sorry for poor old Florrie.

Old Miss Ireland, the one I said I didn’t like, used to ask on Monday morning who had been to church, put your hands up if you had been to church, because they didn’t like it if you didn’t go to church. Anyway Florrie put her hand up and Miss Ireland said, ‘You can put your hand down. You never went to church, you went to the Methodist Church.’

Florrie went to the chapel along South Street and so did Megan Cook (nee Buckett)
Jean Maitland nee Levey b 1928

Phil Kelsey: School days and football

Going to school of course was only a quick nip down the road for me, from Mill Terrace. I remember how we used to play football there. On a Monday as soon as one or two got there, two of us would pick a team of what was there, then we’d start and as each one come into the school they went to one team, and the next one went to the other team. It finished up with quite a number of players on each side. In the top half, the old toilet was one goal. Phil Kelsey b 1920