Big School

 

It was a new school – Big school! After spending my junior school in a village school (Ashwell), which only had two classes for the entire duration, we were transported to the Big school which was in the town of Royston.

The coach journey was good, because we drove along the Royston road, with the green hills on one side, Royston Heath. There were horses, galloping along beside the bus, as the jockeys from a famous stable in Royston, exercised their horses.

When we were slotted into our classes and grades, we felt like small fish in a big pond, so many classes and grades, also every half hour a bell would go and we would move to a different class and subject!

We also had many classes that where completely different from our English, maths, history and geography lessons, as was the curriculum at Ashwell junior school.   We had domestic science (cookery) for example. For this we had to take the ingredients we needed to school in our satchels.

I was in a grade A class for English, but because I was a spirited child (with an over developed sense of humour), I was allocated the middle desk at the front of the class. The very stern, business like, teacher asked me to produce my homework to read to the class – it was covered in strawberry jam! Strange that I ended up doing quite well in English!

I did even better in art, but that’s another story!