My Memories of Helmdon Primary School 1965–1972

"Please Sir! Yes Sir!

My Memories of Helmdon Primary School

1965 – 1972

an article by Joanne Phillips, née Smith

Joanne Phillips. I started school in January 1965, my excitement was huge, especially as that meant I could go in the open backed land rover, driven by Hans Heinaru, which picked up all of the Falcutt children and took them to school. The school had three classrooms and three teachers, Mrs Ipgrave in the infants, Mrs Wood for the “middle class” and Mr Ipgrave for the “top”. We had a small hall or canteen which I can only ever remember being used for school dinners, doing our 11+, the jumble sale, and the Christmas party. The toilets were outside, three toilets for girls and one toilet plus a foul smelling urinal for the boys.

Play time was a really important part of the day. We used to really run around and burnt off all of our energy. We had bottom playground, top playground and ‘Old Stoke!” which was down a semi hidden path to the boiler cellar. We could also use the school field in the summer. There were no ball games allowed in the playground but we played whole playground games like “Sweepsie”, where two people held hands and tagged people who then joined the line until the line reached across the whole of top playground and we “swept” everybody up; the last person standing was the winner. We played British Bulldogs, such a violent version, if your hands were the ones they decided to break through you would feel like you had a broken wrist for a week. We played “Cops and Robbers” and “Kiss Chase” – if you were caught you were taken down “Old Stoke” for your “punishment” to be delivered! To get people involved a group who started the game would walk around the playground with arms linked saying “All in for Cops and Robbers.” Any one who wanted to play would link and arm until there were enough to play.

We had milk before play time each day. Sometimes the milk was frozen, or the birds had pecked the silver milk bottle tops off to drink the cream. We obviously still drank this milk! The most horrible milk was when Mr Ipgrave brought it in to stand by the radiator to defrost. Then we had to drink luke warm milk which nobody liked. We tried to tip it down the sink. School dinners were served in the canteen by Mrs Saunders and Mrs Payne. We had meals like liver and bacon casserole (lots of tubes in the liver!), stuffed heart, steak and kidney pie. We once had chips ….. only once ever in my whole time at primary school. My favourite meal was cheese pie and flat roast meat. Puddings were prunes and rice, semolina and jam, chocolate sponge with custard, spotted dick, jam roly poly, and pink sponge with pink custard. We had to eat every single bit. We were never allowed to leave one single thing on our plates. I once managed to hook each piece of kidney out of my pie and hid them under my knife and fork. To my horror Mr Ipgrave put them all on one fork full and told me to hold my nose while he popped them in! Waste not, want not!

Assemblies were held in Mrs Wood’s classroom each day. The infant class sat cross legged along the front row and the top class sat cross legged up the side corridor of the class room. I can just remember that it consisted of a Bible story and a hymn or two with Mrs Wood playing the piano. We liked singing especially the really loud hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers”.

For lessons we sat in double desks with a lid that could be lifted up to keep your books and pencil case in. The desks were always in lines. In the top class, there was no group work or even pairs work. You worked on your own at your own pace using graded Maths books which you worked sequentially through. You didn’t do anything in specific year groups. I didn’t even realise there were year groups. In Mr Ipgrave’s class there were children aged eight to eleven. We used to go up to the back of the room at the end of each maths page and mark our own maths work. If you dared, you had a quick look on the next page of the mark book, and tried to remember some of the answers for the worksheet you were just going onto!

Geoff Ipgrave and Ruth Ipgrave (right). We had some whole class teaching and we could only speak if we put up our hands and waited for Mr Ipgrave to ask us. We had a very peculiar way of speaking to the teacher and I am not sure if this was the same at other primary schools. We used to punch our fists in the air and say “Please, Please, Please, Please Sir, Please Sir,” We continued until someone was asked, then our answer to him was something like: “Please Sir, Thank you Sir. Last night, Sir, we were out playing on the school field Sir, and I saw a cat with three legs, Sir. Please Sir, Yes sir!” I can’t ever remember being told to do it, but we all did it!

We were very competitive. I can remember seeing my Mum come into school to pick up some work for me to do whilst I stayed with my Grandparents when William was born. I was seven. I was really upset because she had not got enough Maths work and I thought Jamie Wilcox might get ahead of me when I was away!

We did project work in geography. We did a project about an imaginary island called Buffalo island where we looked at the way of life of imaginary people, what jobs they did and what their houses were like. We sang along to “Singing Together” on the radio and sang along to completely inappropriate favourites like “Old Zip Coon!” We moved the desks into blocks covered in newspaper for art lessons. Sometimes, to save money we painted on to the newspaper rather than white paper. For indoor PE we moved all the desks back against the wall and had another radio programme called “Music, Movement and Mime”. We never had to get changed for PE, just take your socks and shoes off and girls had to tuck their dresses into their knickers! We also had the desks back to play our favourite game of Indoor cricket. You had two teams, batters and fielders. You had to hit the tennis ball to get a run by running from the blackboard to Mr Ipgrave’s desk. If you managed to hit it into the wall you got a six. Very little space in the class room so you only had one hit in the 45 minute PE lesson.

We did spelling tests each week. We were given a group of words to learn from the blackboard. Once again, they were not linked to your age, they were linked to your spelling ability. We had a test on Friday mornings. We had tables tests on Thursday morning. We always learnt up to 12x table so that we could work out our Pound, shilling, pence sums. 12 pennies in one shilling. How much easier it is today.

We did exams each term and the results were put up in rank order on the board. No thoughts about public humiliation or pastoral support in those days! Words like dyslexia, ADHD, vulnerable children or learning difficulties were never used, children who found the work harder were usually described as lazy, lacking in concentration or were just plain naughty! We did the 11+ before Christmas in our final year at primary school. One morning’s exam, no preparation or cramming or learning to the test. Just sit in the canteen do the test, with the result determining which secondary school we went to, the Grammar or the Secondary Modern. The words used to describe the results were pass or fail. You have passed the 11+ or you have failed it! I think about three out of the 12 of us in my year passed the 11+. One person who passed did not go to the grammar school because her parents decided that they already had the secondary modern uniform from her older sisters and couldn’t afford to buy the uniform for the High School.

Mr Ipgrave had that great pencil sharpener on his desk. When I did a school stationary order at school when I was teaching, I ordered one for me. I loved it. Mrs wood smacked me because she tripped over my feet.

Joanne Phillips
2020