On Saturday evening, after our trip to Tavistock, we dashed back home,
had a quick cuppa and then went to... school !
The school where I once taught, Decoy Primary School, in Newton Abbot
is 100 years old this year.
For me, this school has many family connections.
Firstly, my Grandma was the first ever PTA treasurer at the school!
Not only that, she was school cook, for a time.
My mum helped to set up the first nursery there,
before she went off to train to be a teacher.
All of her brothers and sisters attended the school (6 of them!)
My own children went to the school as did my nephews.
Incredibly, as I started to look around at all the photos, one photo
in particular jumped out at me immediately...
Molly Button
This was the aunty I never knew.
My mum's youngest sister, the youngest of the Button family.
Very sadly, she caught Polio and died at the age of 12 years.
That was before I was born but I recall hearing all about her
so many times when I was young.
So there she was...right in front of me!
I enquired as to where this photograph had been found
as I know that my mum has the same photograph somewhere.
I was told that some boxes of photos had been found in a loft
of an ex head teacher's house.
I could have spent hours and hours just browsing!
I attended the 50 years and the 75 years celebrations
and so it seemed only right to go along this time.
Finally this caught my eye!!
There I am! I'm the teacher with the pink top, 7th from the left.
And moving along the line to the right...
there's my friend Linda, in the red dress;
she has the blog called Chalky's World!
Good job they didn't sit us together..we would probably
have had each other in stitches!!
Finally...
Naturally, I took a peep at some of the creative work
and these studies of artists caught my eye!
One wonders what the next 25 years will bring for this school!
I hope I'll make it to those celebrations too!
Meanwhile ..a giveaway!
For my giveaway...just comment on this post telling me the best memory
you have of your schooldays!! Funny or serious!! ;-)
A pack of my vintage, small feedsack pieces will be the prize!
;-)
XXX
Thanks for sharing the pics of your school, it looks very much like one I attended.
ReplyDeleteOne year we went to school camp - from a village near Nottingham to Holkham in Norfolk.
This particular day the whole camp walked from the grounds of Holkham Hall where we were staying, through the pine trees and sand dunes and onto the beach which we followed to the lifeboat station where we had a visit.
We had been split into two groups and about 10 mins into the return trip my friend J realised she had left her folder at the lifeboat station, so the headmaster told us to run back for it and return to the camp with the second group who were still at the station.
Only they weren't there (and neither was the folder!!)
We tried to catch up with our group but they were long gone and J and I were two 11 year olds lost on this deserted beach. We wandered along alternating with crying and laughing but we couldn't see the turning into the woods.
Finally, we saw a boardwalk and followed that until we came to the road which we crossed and found our way back into the grounds of the hall. By the time we got back we had been missing 4 hours or so and were greeted as heroes!! We were just in time for tea so it was all very Enid Blyton!!
Of course we thought it was all a big adventure but now as a mother I realise how serious it was and I am a bit paranoid about letting my boys go on school trips!!
My fondest memories were the steamed puddings and custard!!
S x
We had a wonderful teacher in Junior school and his wife used to make the best flapjack that my teacher would sell to us at break time for 2p a slab! There was an out cry when he upped the price to 5p but it was well worth it!
ReplyDeleteKaren x
The best memory for me was in my junior school when the teacher taught the whole class, boys as well to cross stitch.
ReplyDeleteLovely to meet you again on Saturday.
Julie xxxxxxx
What a great nostalgic post.
ReplyDeleteOne of my memories - Junior School, before the school closed on a Friday afternoon we had prayers, you had to put your chair on your desks, mine was near the door. There I was, hands together, head bowed, when............ bang. I thought God was giving me a right clout for some transgression......... but it was a latecomer, charged into the classroom, knocked my chair off , split my head open, blood everywhere. I can remember walking down the corridor saying to the teacher "they won't cut my hair off will they?" (they didn't, just a couple of stitches).
Carol xx
What great memories there were for you at the school!
ReplyDeleteMy fondest memory was winning a school writing competition aged about 9. My story was about a horse of course & fully illustrated. I won one of those wonderful boxes of Crayola crayons with tiers of different coloured crayons & a sharpener in the back of the box - I thought it was the best thing ever!
Jayne
My junior school was C of E church school and our playground backed onto the playground of the Catholic school separated by only wire fencing.There was never any problems between the two schools unless it snowed when we had a huge snowball fight.
ReplyDeleteGillx
Lovely photos Sal and lovely memories. The village school that I went to all those years ago had a Miss Smith, who was a pupil-teacher - she was fantastic with small children and an expert at removing loose milk teeth with a hanky and a quick little twist! I can still smell the wet socks, hats and gloves pushed through the wire of the fire guard to dry round the fire on winter's mornings.
ReplyDeleteWhat lovely school memories, and artwork!
ReplyDeleteAs I went to primary school run by nuns, I remember gigling with my friends if they really DID have any hair under their wimpoles! Also as they seemed to glide around with their black 'habits' flowing along the school corridoors, that we thought they were using roller-skates!
Happy days.....
Jillxx
Lovely post Sal. One of my favourite memories was from Infant School. I went to a fairly small village school that was right at the other end of the village from where we lived. One Winter we had heavy snow during the day and the boiler broke down, the roads were very scarey and one of our poor teachers volunteered to walk around 6 of us home over the fields. We thought it was a great adventure. one boy in my class was a little bit erm naughty, Darren Cotton was his name. He decided instead of going over the little bridge over the dyke, he'd jump it, you know what happened next don't you? How on earth he didn't get hypothermia I don't know. The school was closed for the rest of the week and we had a great time building snowmen and having massive snowball fights.
ReplyDeleteTwiggy x
Well I was a rather talkative little girl and I was a whiz at Latin. One thing we had to do in class was Latin translation. Each student would stand up and read/translate from our Latin text. My Latin teacher used to push my desk into the farthest corner of the room so I wouldn't whisper answers to the others. If I was caught she would fire sticks of chalk at me. I was very good at dodging them which I think just infuriated her more. So she would throw extras at me to make sure I was paying attention. Ah the joys of childhood:)
ReplyDeleteWe had an excellent teacher who put the fear of God in everyone! One day we had maps to color for Geography- the ones hwere you do rivers blue, mtns brown, etc. We all had our books open to our page and as our teacher walked around the front of the room, she noticed that one map was oddly colored-NOT the same as the rest. When she went up to look closer she discovered he (the boy) had actually vomited on the page earlier but was too afraid to tell her!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is from the very lady in the red dress!!! I remember at that very school having to collect our school lunch from the kitchen and carry it back to a desk-- As far as I remember not necessarily your own. I hated school dinners and you had to eat every bit in those days-- Well my answer to that was to stuff the most offensive item down the inkwell in the desk! Well the prefect saw me and I was of course sent to the Headmisstress who was seriously not impressed -- in fact she was furious!
ReplyDeleteLovely post Sally and I love the story of your Aunt
Kindest Regards Linda
What a great celebration for the school and how lovely to have so many family connections to it! Molly Button looks a sweet girl -how sad...
ReplyDeleteOne of my strongest memories is of being called to the Headmaster's office one afternoon. I knew I was in trouble but couldn't imagine what I had done (I was a bit of a goody-goody!) Turned out that there were two pairs of plimsolls with my name on in the Lost Property box and Mr J was most unimpressed by 'my' carelessness! But they weren't mine, but ones my younger brother had inherited - he had an unending supply of hand-me-down plimsolls from me and my sister, so when he lost a pair, he just helped himself to another! I explained but was told off all the same. And my brother, for whom Mr J had a soft spot due to his plucky nature in spite of his cerebral palsy, got off scot-free! Oh, the injustice!
I remember at 5 years old we had a huge fire place in the "baby" class and in winter a huge fire kept us warm. There were 44 children in our class all through to 11 years old.(health and safety---what's that!!!!). Veronica.
ReplyDeleteMolly Button. What a fab name.
ReplyDeleteWith so many of your family having attended the school I expect you found quite a few images that were familiar. It must have been fun.
Junior school, we were all sitting cross-legged in the hall for assembly when the door was pushed open and in bounced my dog. He'd got away from Dad on the way home and followed me. It was very funny until Dad turned up, and then it was embarrassing!
Reading about Latin lessons brought a funny memory you might get a laugh from--A girl in our class had no interest and when it came to the end of year exams she hadn't learned a single Latin word. we were asked to translate "Caesar owned many fast horses" into Latin. This was her only contribution to the whole 1 hour exam--"Caesarum hadum muchum swiftum horsum" Result,detention!!!
ReplyDeleteI am sat sniggering at Veronica's comment.... what a corker! I used to hate school milk........ warm and yucky... bleuch! bleuch! BLEUCH!
ReplyDelete