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Sylvia Sharp: Yarmouth School 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s

Yarmouth C. of E. Primary School   :    Mrs Sylvia Sharp             Head teacher Christmas 1968 – 1994

At Christmas 1968 I took over the headship of Yarmouth School from Mrs V.A.Barton, who had been head for 32 years. It was then an infant/junior school of 104 pupils , with  3 classrooms created by dividing one long hall into 3 by sliding ½ glass screens.

Mrs D. Vanson and Miss J. Bull were established as assistant teachers – both 12 years older than me! Mrs J Hall was part time assistant for the reception class of 34 pupils.

In June 1969 after I’d been at the school for 6 months, an electrical fire broke out in the southernmost classroom, luckily overnight so the classroom was devoid of humans. Mr. Holloway the then caretaker wakened me in the adjoining schoolhouse at 7.15a.m. and the fire brigade were on the scene within 20 minutes. School was closed for 2 days whilst all the staff sifted through the smoke and soot–blackened equipment to see what could be salvaged.

In September ’71 the ten and eleven year olds were transferred to West Wight Middle School – the start of the 3 tier system being introduced on the Island –  leaving Yarmouth with the age range 5 – 9 years.

As Yarmouth is surrounded on 3 sides by sea, and we were no longer allowed to teach children to swim in the sea,  we decided to build a swimming pool. A very active and supportive PTA helped to organise several extraordinary  events to raise money .
One of the most  ludicrous was a Dads versus Mums football match at the Recreation ground, where the men dressed as women and women as men, with feigned injuries to raise the laughs. Stretcher bearers carried off the ‘injured’ to howls of laughter and indignation. It wasn’t till after the match that we discovered that one of the dads had sustained a genuine injury and had to be taken off to A. and E.
* John Golding remembers being delegated to play in goal, for the mums – the only man on the team, wearing a wig of long blond curls and not allowed in the mums ‘changing room!

Our ‘It’s a Knockout ‘ competition delighted participants and spectators, especially when the Head Teacher was deluged with an entire dustbin of water by Mr. Roger Giles of Harwoods.
During our barbecue at Compton Beach the dads were beachcombing for firewood and gratefully received a huge pile of wood donated by a complete stranger. His donation had been burnt before our benefactor discovered his mistake – his party was half a mile away along the beach!

We finally raised the £780 to buy the pool, and the PTA dads, led by Michael Persse, constructed it.
It was a worthwhile effort as only 2 children left the school as non swimmers in ensuing years ( both of them had excuse notes to prevent them from swimming more often than was necessary!)

Building work to improve accommodation, designed by Mr. Biggs
( Architect), was started in the early 1970’s. Once again, the P.T.A. raised most of the money with funds topped up by the D.E.S.
( Department of Education and Science – what happened to them?)
Teaching and building work continued in parallel. At one time a class was in session with only a tarpaulin between builders and students ( Health and Safety eat your heart out!)

When work was completed we had windows that children could see out of, and spacious rooms with carpets and new furniture more suitable for small children – luxury indeed.

Yarmouth School 2013

Yarmouth School 2013 showing new windows

We also had our own kitchen and cook. Prior to that, meals were prepared at Shalfleet or West Wight and sent to us in containers , by van. We had had to use the reception room for dining with monitors, elected weekly, to set up tables and benches for lunch.
* Mrs Mary Lord, reception teacher from 1974, wondered at the time of her interview  whether her ability to move furniture about, had contributed in part to her appointment!

In the second ’87 Great Storm, conditions were so worrying that we gathered all the children into the hall, which is large and with relatively few windows. Ten minutes later something crashed into the west- facing windows of the reception class and glass shattered everywhere. The suspended ceiling was dislodged and tiles scattered. As I was phoning County Hall from the office, a dinghy blew past the window and over the wall into Mill Road. We all survived to tell the tale, but it was hair raising at the time.

One afternoon in ’89 a man entered my classroom. Obviously not in full possession of his faculties, he told me he was a member of the S.A.S., rambling fairly incoherently for several minutes whilst I was gently manoeuvring him towards the exit. As it was nearly time for the children to leave schooI phoned the police for protection for the children and shouted to the men repairing the school roof to keep watch!

Drama was much more enjoyable when we were all involved in pantomimes!

Yarmouth School pantomime 1970s

Yarmouth School pantomime 1970s

Mrs. Edna Crosbie proposed that we should have a pantomime at the school, involving all the children and parent volunteers, to raise money for school funds. We readily agreed and a good time was had by all who took part, and more importantly by the town’s community as audience. What a fun way to rally support!

We repeated this venture every second year until my retirement in 1994. Our last pantomime was entitled ‘In at the Sharp End’!

All requests for building work at Yarmouth School, although written on official request forms, were written in doggerel verse (* Alu can letter)  by the ‘Poet Looreate’ ,

Mrs. Sharp's Alu cans letter

Mrs. Sharp’s Alu cans letter

as indeed was my retirement note and a poem for our OFSTED inspectors, when we were chosen for a pre OFSTED trial, from which we emerged triumphant. The County Hall Architects Department (AKA Ivor Trowell) often replied in rhyme. The OFSTED inspectors sent their report  in rhyme, set to music, and requested us to sing it to the School Governors at our WRAP party.

Yarmouth was only a little school, but we did have fun. I had lovely pupils, a dedicated staff and supportive parents. What more could you ask?

Mrs Sharp at her leaving party  July 1994

Mrs Sharp at her leaving party July 1994

The only thing that the children will remember of their Head Teacher is her idiocyncratic kaftans and painted toenails – both deliberately adopted after noting the children’s enthusiastic reaction to the Afton Festival crowds!

* Not true, Mrs Sharp, you are remembered with much affection for your exuberant, encouraging and positive approach to learning. Miss Bull remembers you starting every day with a jolly comment.

Jane Phillips: Newclose Farm, Thorley, 1950s

Newclose Farm

How did I come to be milking the herd of cows at Newclose Farm?

Broad Lane to Newclose Farm buildings 2013

Broad Lane to Newclose Farm buildings 2013       Newclose Farmhouse on left, old milking parlour at end of road.

I’d spent a couple of years at a rather grand school in London, Mary Datchelors, which was famous for its singing. It’s left me with a love for classical music, but I was such a dunce!   After a couple of years in the Remove, struggling with algebra, geometry, trigonometry, Latin and French, they thought I’d better not go on.

So I came home, didn’t know what to do. ‘You’re too stupid to work in Woolworth’s,’ they told me, so they let me go to work farming.

I did three years at Cliff End at 2/6 a week. There was no keep included, but they bought cakes once a week on a Tuesday. The mice pretty soon got’em so they gave us the mousey ones, and we’d break off the mousey bits.

Do you know that little green magazine ‘The Countryman’? There was an advert in there from the UK Sponsoring Authority. You could go to a farm in France, Belgium or Holland. Well, I went off to Friesland in Holland. At Cliff farm they thought I was going off to darkest Africa – wouldn’t let me take my hoe and my 2 pronged fork that I’d saved up for and bought myself.

After a year in Holland, some time in Derbyshire and then in Devon, Ernest Heal offered me a job in charge of 30 cows at Newclose. Can you imagine how I felt?  It gave me such confidence. He left me in charge, didn’t want to know unless there was anything wrong. I was so grateful to him. He opened so much for me in life.

Newclose Farm is on the crossroads and I used to have to take the heifers up Broad Lane to Dog Kennel. What a job! They’d run like mad and there were no hedges, they’d been taken out just before I started at Newclose.
I was smarter with the calves though. I had 6 or so and I bought some halters and used to walk them up through the fields by where Holmfield Avenue is – there was just the one house there.  Mind you, I’d be walking them over the crossroads and a bus would come, and the calves would be tying themselves up.

Picking up sheaves with working horses

Picking up sheaves with working horses

Char Courtney and Shep Hillier worked there too. Char was in charge of the tractor and the horse –  Ernest Heal had the last working horse on the Island. Char was supposed to know the names of all the cows and all about them; which ones needed a stone on the machine when they were being milked and so on. Did he hell! He knew all the horses at the bookies!

One day he was driving the tractor, getting the kale from a field up Broad Lane. The tractor couldn’t get up the slope but the old horse could.

I worked there for about 3 or 4 years till 1956. I didn’t live there, I had a room at The Old House in Yarmouth with a Mrs Weston – £7 a week it cost me, the same as I earned, so Ernest Heal had to make my money up a bit, because I smoked too in those days. In the summer I lived in a sort of shed at the end of Wheatsheaf Lane.

Den ( Dennis Phillips from Compton farm))  and I were courting, while I was at Newclose.   I remember sitting in a ditch at the side of the farm chatting with the old roadmen. One of them had a wooden leg so I used to help him chuck up the sweepings into the cart. A lorry went by, ‘Oh look, it’s a Dennis!’ I said and didn’t they tease me!

We did have our own names for places. We called the cross roads ‘Flat Rat cross roads’…

When I left to get married, Ernest Heal gave me several bits of silver plate which must have been in his family. One is a real beauty, a simple epergne, which looks lovely with fruit piled up.
Jane Phillips nee Alder b 1932