School Days

See also PINKY BROWNS SCHOOL PAGE

Can you remember the day you started School.

I began the autumn term. Tears were falling along with the leaves as I and my contemporaries emerged from our terraced dwellings and made the two hundred yard trek along our street to the school corner. The morning began as usual, two fresh eggs from the garden fried on bread in beef or pork dripping. Every small corner of me had been cleaned and inspected; this was a horrible day indeed. Turbaned mothers in poker dots and red lipstick clipped heels together in their triumphal march along the street. Got rid at last, peace, me time, and lots of other thinngs

  Tight lipped and with jellied legs we approached the high green ornate gates of Tredegar Warf School, aptly named after the districts prime benefactor and land owner , Lord Tredegar. There was little reluctance from the gathering in offering a less than gentle shove into the playground, along with a few timely words of warning, followed by a slapped leg in respect of forthcoming insurrection.

“Line up,” bellowed her in tweed and laced up brogues.

  We followed into grey areas smelling of stale urine. At the closing of the day the whole class stank of stale urine, for the percentage of fear induced little accidents were extremely high. Our first classroom had individual brown desks, upon which lay my first school acquisition, a large stubby crayon and a strip of cheap powdery paper measuring about four by one and a half inches. To use only one side of this was an offence punishable by hanging. Each strip of paper would support two letters of the alphabet, so be warned.

We stood in fear and trepidation at our first assembly, muttering the Lords prayer like some carefully rehearsed escape plan. We were in fact talking pure nonsense as none of us actually knew it. The Luke warm milk which had been placed on the cast iron radiators was yellow and nauseating. It sat in our tummies like a bad egg in the latter stages of fermentation. After an hour or so we were called to attention it was play time.

The sounds of the street were omnipresent as were the billowing puffy white clouds of steam scudding across the terraced landscape. Now there was a ten foot high chain link fence between me and all that I loved - Pillgwenlly (c)

Pictures Show Left top to bottom. Maindee School under demolition, Tredegar Warf, St Micheals, Bolt Street Teachers C1950,

Top Right. Bolt Street and below Belle View (Spring Gardens)

Do you have a schoolpicture we can publish, of your class or school building. Please contact us we shall be happy to include your memories of school days.