Picture: Cliff Daniels in the doorway on Mount Pleasant. (Priestland, P.,1989)
Interview With 77 Year old Ex-School Pupil of the Annexe.
Mr. C. Daniels was a resident of the Annexe school from the year 1923, when he was 5, to when he left, at age 14, in 1937. During this time he travelled each year into each classroom of the building, starting in “Room 1”, then moving to “Room 2, Standard room 1, through to 5 & 6,” which was a joint classroom.
It was by chance this interview would take place, in the Radcliffe Library, at 9.50am, (1991).
The first question asked was on the year of his arrival, in 1923. The first room was “Room 1”, This is for the 5 year olds, and contained a rocking horse, as this would be the first school and teacher the child would be alone with, as there were no nurseries. The rocking horse was used to calm the children down. At the reunion he was asked to sign the horse, which required minor work on it, as memorabilia of the school’s hay day.
The breaks where from 10.00am – 10.15am, and the infant side was separated from the juniors by the iron railings, and a large shed, where the toilets were situated, with the woodwork taking place outside of this. The tools for the woodwork were stored in the stoke hole, where the coal was put to burn and heat the building’s hot water and pipes.
The dinner time took place from midday – 2.00pm, and there was no dining hall or facilities for the children, so they had three options. The first, which most people did, was to go home. The second was to eat sandwiches in the cloak rooms, and the third was to wait till you got home in the evening.
At the time there were prefects in the schools to watch over the younger children, sometimes these prefects took advantage however, and there was no teacher to “tell.”
One of the games played at lunchtime, was football. This was carried out around the right hand side of the building, and involved opening the main gates and using them as goal posts. This did not cause too many problems, and the teachers did not usually get involved, as there was limited traffic on the road then anyway, and certainly only a speed limit of 20 mph or so.
Other school subjects were gardening, which only the boys did, the girls were doing another activity, which at the time of writing this, is unknown. In the gardens were apple trees and the standard vegetables and flowers.
The teachers with their classroom numbers, are as follows:
Room 1 – Miss Packward
Room 2 – Miss Seaton
Standard Room 1 – Miss Frier
Standard Room 2 – Miss Green
Standard Room 3 – Mr Turner
Standard Room 4 – Miss Cuthbert (Over Stoke Hole)
Standard Room 5 & 6 – Mr Naughton (The Headmaster, nick name Winky Naughton .. )
The standard school day started at 9.00am and finished at 4.30pm.
In the place of the modern day toilets stood the infants and juniors third and fourth cloak rooms.
Troy Jenkinson 