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