Were you at Berridge?

[PeverilPeril 2,808]

Well done Jill. I look forwards to the visit. I will bring my school reports and photo's.

 

All of my old schools are still standing. Bentink Rd, The Windley (not a school now), Berridge Rd., and Nottm Tech (now Trent Uni).

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

Brilliant, PP. They are looking for photos, anecdotes, stories...anything connected with the history of the school.

 

Presumably, during your time there, you would have been housed on the second floor of the main building and also used the wooden huts.

 

If I close my eyes, I can mentally walk round the place. Even smell the carbolic soap! I'm eager to see what It all looks like now.

[PeverilPeril 2,808]

Yes Jill, us boys were on the upper level. Ah! the wooden huts. They were the science lab with Mr Cheesman and the woodwork shop with Mr Kendrick. I will also bring a bread board that I made in that woodwork shop. We still use it 66 years on. It was made from the centre of a toilet seat  So, a storey to tell the pupils.

[LizzieM 8,784]

3 minutes ago, PeverilPeril said:

Yes Jill, us boys were on the upper level. Ah! the wooden huts. They were the science lab with Mr Cheesman and the woodwork shop with Mr Kendrick. I will also bring a bread board that I made in that woodwork shop. We still use it 66 years on. It was made from the centre of a toilet seat  So, a storey to tell the pupils.

I’m intrigued PP, our toilet seats have a big round hole in the centre.  

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

In the autumn term of 1967, in my penultimate year at Berridge, my class was housed in the wooden hut nearest the railings. I think we were in there for two terms before relocating to the second floor of the main buildings. The benches and gas taps were still there! There was a small area behind the teacher's dais which our form master, Mr Chandler, had equipped as a darkroom as photography was his hobby. We developed prints and used an enlarger...great fun.

 

Once the senior boys had departed, alterations were made to provide toilets inside the main  building and create a library on the top floor. A dining hall and kitchen was also created on the ground floor. It all seemed very swish and indoor loos were sheer luxury!

[FLY2 10,096]

Hopefully pp, you mean the lid ! I can't imagine anyone capable of making a bread board out of a hole !

[philmayfield 4,418]

54 minutes ago, LizzieM said:

I’m intrigued PP, our toilet seats have a big round hole in the centre.  

Yes, I bet you wondered where that ‘offcut’ went. Never thought it would make a bread board! 

[PeverilPeril 2,808]

The toilet seat centres were given to the school as were lots of off cuts. The seasoned Red Deal was a pleasure to work with but is no longer available. I have a stock of old timber salvaged from old doors and frames. Can't buy that quality of wood nowadays. There was a glass case in the woodwork shop showing timber sample from around the world. The importer was Fitchett and Wollacott, a Nottingham company. In my days at Berridge 1948/53 the woodwork shop was next to the railings. My best memories of Berridge were the woodwork and science lab wooded buildings. I can recollect the interiors quite vividly.

[philmayfield 4,418]

At Mellish the lab benches were made of teak. Loppylugs father in law, Bob McCandles, the physics master, was always blathering on about the quality and not to damage them. I well remember Fitchett and Wollacot and buying quality hardwoods from them.

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

 

My first Berridge photograph, taken in 1963, by which time, I'd been there a year!  This has been posted before but fell foul of Photobucket!

 

I'm 5th from the left on the front row.

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

The little boy at the far right of the front row is Richard Sewell. He lived on Grundy Street. For some reason, I took a dislike to this lad and during a flashcard session with the teacher, from which I'd been excluded because in her words, "No one else gets a chance!" I gave his PE bag a very un- Christian burial in a large box of bricks. I ensured that no one went near it for weeks by inventing a terrifying tale about a tarantula which lived in the box!

 

Poor old Richard got into terrible trouble for having no PE kit and his parents had to buy a new one.

 

He moved to Highbury Vale. Perhaps the little girls were kinder to him there! 

[loppylugs 8,201]

Oooooh!  that was mean.  

 

That'd teach him a lesson.   Remind me not to cross you.  Lol.

 

Edited to add.  Glad to see the photo.  Did the girls move on to Saint Trinians?  

 

My late wife attended Nottingham High School for Girls.  we always used to kid her on that that was where the idea for the Saint Trinians series came from.  We could get her really wound up over at.

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

 

By 1964, I was in Miss Bowen's class. She was lovely. Poor Richard Sewell is still with us but left shortly afterwards.  I am front row, extreme right and he is two places to my left.

[letsavagoo 661]

A few years ago my wife and I went to have a look at Berridge as we were in the area. The school was turning out and a man who turned out to be the head asked if he could help. We told him we were both ex pupils and he treated us to a tour of the school spending some time with us. Considering to years it hasn't changed a great deal. Stage gone but still essentially as it was. That head was retiring so it will be a different one now. I still have the program for the school Christmas play, Aladdin, 1964 or 66 I think. I kept it as both myself and my wife appear in the cast list. We didn't know each other then, I'm a bit older but we met a few years later. Count me in on any visit please.

I was with a class of Berridge pupils only last week who were visiting St Stephens Bobbers Mill as part of the Armistice day celebrations. They viewed the film made about the letters my Grandfather wrote home in WW1 and saw the roll of honour.

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

Visit is at the planning stage but probably around March/ April 2019. All those interested are welcome.

 

I don't remember a stage. Where was it?

 

There used to be a wall between the senior boys' playground and the infant playground. The two were on different levels with the latter being lower. When I was in the infant school, there was a flight of steps leading up to a wooden gate which opened into the senior playground, although the gate was always locked.  Around 1968, the wall was partially demolished and a ramp was installed to facilitate access between the two levels.

[letsavagoo 661]

The lower playground is now a car park for staff I assume. The stage was what the teachers stood on to do the assembly every day. Proper stage I recall with curtains etc. 

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

2 minutes ago, letsavagoo said:

The lower playground is now a car park for staff I assume. The stage was what the teachers stood on to do the assembly every day. Proper stage I recall with curtains etc. 

Can't work out where this could have been as both ends of the halls had doors which accessed classrooms. I recall a temporary platform, of sorts, for Christmas plays, etc, but no actual stage with curtains. Which hall was it in?

[letsavagoo 661]

The top hall for sure. The class rooms were accessed as the stage finished short of the wall on the right looking at it. It wasn't a temporary structure as I went underneath it a time or two. You could come off the stage right, into one of the classrooms without being seen from the hall. 

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

I think the stage was probably a casualty of the revamp of around 1967. It certainly wasn't there when I was in the juniors. PP was in the senior boys on the top floor so he will probably remember it. Junior assembly in my time was taken by Mr Baugh who stood on the floor and the class teachers sat around the edge of the hall.

 

Do you remember Mr Griffiths who was the previous head? He was there in my sister's time. Mr Cook was deputy head and still there for around one year when I entered the juniors.

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

 

Class of senior Berridge boys in 1958. Source:  Berridge, the Schools' First One Hundred Years, 1984.

 

The senior school closed in July 1964, just as I was leaving the infants. There followed a lengthy period of alterations in many areas of the school.

 

Apparently, the single storey building which housed infants in my day is now used as an international centre for adults learning English and as a kitchen facility. It should be available for us to see during the visit.

[benjamin1945 14,079]

Always remember one particular lad from Berridge school,, surname of Gregg or Greig,,very good at football and cricket,, he would be my age Jill.......don't suppose you remember him do you ?

[loppylugs 8,201]

What strikes me about the boys photo is how we all looked much the same at that age.  At the Chandos Academy we all wore uniform but many of those lads look just like we all did.  Even to the teacher standing at the extreme right.

[philmayfield 4,418]

Perhaps you all had the same milkman! 

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

His name wasn't Ben, was it?

 

I know what you mean though, Loppy. Girls look very similar too.

[Jill Sparrow 8,618]

56 minutes ago, benjamin1945 said:

Always remember one particular lad from Berridge school,, surname of Gregg or Greig,,very good at football and cricket,, he would be my age Jill.......don't suppose you remember him do you ?

The only person of that name known to me was at The Manning and is otherwise known as Pickleface!