Settled Down at School, January 1941 – Spring 1944
Stockport School
On 13th January 1941, I entered my new school at Stockport, some five miles from Marple, at the start of the second (winter) term. Stockport School, at Mile End in Stockport, the nearest Secondary school, was actually a very impressive school. Having only just opened in the autumn of 1938, it was still in a pretty much pristine condition. Built around the open, grassed, quadrangle principle, it was similar to that of the, much smaller, school which I had attended for a while at Westgate, in Kent, when we were living at Birchington-on-Sea.
At Stockport School there were about 600 boys at that time, in four streams (A, B, C and D) for the first four years, and two each in the 5th and 6th form. Streams A, B and C took their School Certificate (SC) in the 4th form, while form 4D and those who needed to retake their SC examinations went on for another year to 5A and 5B before sitting for their School Certificate. The SC syllabus at the school was that of the Northern Universities Joint Matriculation Board (NUJMB), considered, generally, to be more demanding than the corresponding Southern and London University standards. School Certificate required, as a minimum, passes in English Language, Mathematics and (I think) at least five other subjects, all to be taken at the same time. Failure to pass in one of the compulsory subjects, or the achievement of the minimum number of subjects required, meant having to re-sit all the papers the following year. Having obtained their SC, boys could progress to the Lower 6th to embark on the two-year Higher School Certificate (HSC) course. HSC required four subjects, one of which could be taken at the subsidiary level, that is basically at the standard reached after one year. The final HSC examinations were then taken in the Upper 6th and, again, required passes in at least three subjects for the award of the Higher School Certificate.
These examinations were the equivalent of latter-day GCSE and ‘A’ and ‘AS’ levels, and provided similar entries to University. Significantly though, the proportion of students that entered University was very much lower at that time. There were, however, alternative further education options available, which have all but disappeared since the 1980’s. These alternatives were generally apprenticeships or craft training schemes of one sort or another. In the aircraft industry, for example, individual companies had their own apprentice training schools, which offered the practical experience required for the wide range of disciplines and departments, both workshops and offices, with a further option of part-time, or sandwich type attendance at university or local technical colleges.
In 1941, however, consideration of my further education was still only on the somewhat indistinct far horizon for, hopefully, we should be returning to Czechoslovakia in due course where I would complete my education. Judging from my initiation at Stockport School, Mr Cook’s (i.e. the Headmaster’s) expectations of me could not have been very high, and having joined the school at the beginning of the second term, I was placed in Form 1D, the lowest stream of the first year. Normal class sizes at the time were something in excess of 30 and this class was typical with about 36. The boys were friendly and the atmosphere, as I remember it, was congenial.
Although there were a number of boys from Marple at the school (perhaps 15 to 20 at a guess), there were none in form 1D. Thus my first friend there was Peter Heywood, who lived at Stockport. Peter was a smallish boy who, for some reason, went by the name of Sam. His parents had a small semi-detached (council) house at Heaton Chapel, and he had one older sister, aged about 16, and of whom he was very proud and who he thought was everything a girl should be. Sam and I hit it off well quite early on and I used to love visiting him at his house, particularly, as he had one of the highly desirable toy / model railways of the day – a Hornby 0 gauge set-up, with a lovely clockwork-driven 4-6-4 locomotive and a good supply of track and rolling stock. The engine had probably seen better days (elsewhere?), for even though it was desirable, the motor had got somewhat tired and it was not really capable of towing a long train. However, we had great fun with it and also made numerous local excursions. Somehow he never got round to visiting my house at distant Marple – one disadvantage of living more than five miles from school, but our friendship was to last.
Even though Form 1D was the lowest rated class, there was no unwillingness on the part of the boys to learn and lessons were taken with all due attention, participation and respect for our teachers. Thinking back now, the boys must have all been of a reasonable standard for, if one did not pay any school fees, the only other way into the school was by means of entrance examinations and scholarships, for which it was necessary to demonstrate a certain standard of education. Most of the boys at Stockport School, at the time I arrived there, must have been on scholarships. This state of affairs ended in around 1944, with the passing of the education act, which abolished school fees in all but private schools.
I managed to keep up with the schoolwork reasonably well, even if my knowledge of the language was not as wide as it might have been. However, I was learning English quickly and cannot really remember any problems on that account. Academic records of that first year at Stockport School have, unfortunately, not survived, but I did sufficiently well to gain promotion to Form 2C at the end of the year. I must, therefore, have finished in the first three.
A schoolboy’s life
Attending school at a longish distance, like the five miles from Marple, meant inevitably that your best friends would come from near home as one spent much time travelling together. To get to school from Marple, we had to catch the number 27 or 28 North Western bus outside The Navigation public house. This would take us all the way to Stockport. We would normally get off on Wellington Road South, where we then took a tram ride to Davenport. The normal tram fare cost 1d or only 1/2d if you possessed a school pass, which I never somehow got around to acquiring. Trams were very frequent but we would, nevertheless run after them and jump on as they were pulling away from the tram stop, for their acceleration was not very great. Once on, you would try to stay on the platform or, failing that, go upstairs. If it was a Manchester Corporation tram, the whole upper deck was enclosed and quite comfortable, with upholstered, reversible seats, so that passengers could always be facing forward. If, however, it was one of the smaller, older, four-wheeled, Stockport Corporation trams, then the upper deck was relatively compact, with open ‘balconies’ at each end, which was much more exciting.
Alternatively, rather than going all the way to Stockport, we could get off at Offerton, at Nangreave Road, and walk the rest of the distance of about one mile, or stay on the bus a little further up to the Battersby hat factory where we could pick up a local Stockport Corporation single-decker bus which would take us very nearly to the school gates. By and large, most of us used to take the one-mile walk from the Nangreave Road stop, except in bad weather, when we would go on and catch the tram. The return journey was a slightly different proposition, for by the time the Marple-bound bus got to Offerton, it was very often full. We would therefore take the tram all the way into Stockport’s Mersey Square, where most of our buses originated. In later years we would all take to the bicycle to cover the five-mile journey each way.
‘We’, at that time, consisted primarily of John ‘Titch’ Chadwick, Graham Fentem and McGaffie. I say McGaffie, because traditionally we all tended to address each other by our surnames. This was normal at school, certainly as far as the teachers were concerned and, therefore, was also the norm outside school. It was only in close friendships, perhaps when visiting each other’s houses, that one learned to use first names. Thus, all of us being in the same age group, Titch, Fentem, McGaffie and I used to congregate together as a group, at school, on the buses, and at Marple outside school time.
Titch Chadwick, as his nickname implies, was a small boy and he and I had many interests in common. I remember his mother claiming, more than once, that they were related (even if only distantly) to Roy Chadwick, who, as everybody knew in those days, was the Chief Designer at Avro’s in Manchester. What’s more, Roy Chadwick had been responsible for designing the Avro Lancaster heavy bomber, the mainstay and pride of the RAF and was thus a well-known, eminent, personality.
Peter Graham Fentem was quite different. He had an elder brother, Philip George, which always struck me as most peculiar, the two brothers having the same initials. They lived in one of the smarter parts of Marple, in Winnington Road, a few houses further down from the Hillers – the parents of Wendy Hiller, the actress. Graham and I used to go to football matches together, thinking nothing of cycling to Maine Road to see Manchester City or Manchester United. Both teams played there during the war as the United ground at Old Trafford was destroyed during the 1940 blitz on Manchester. Other people were curious about Graham’s surname, the spelling of which was, apparently, unusual, but I was then quite unaware of such subtleties of the English language, so did not find that particularly interesting.
McGaffie was not so much a friend as an acquaintance. He lived in Cross Lane, off Stockport Road, at the bottom of Station road, opposite the police station, but we got on well enough travelling together on the buses and later, more often than not, by bike.
But my school friends did not all come from Marple by any means and two of these stand out in particular – Gerald Lee and Brian Corr. Both of these lived at Stepping Hill, about ten minutes walk from the school, in the Hazel Grove direction. Gerald came from a ‘good’ middle class, English, family, his father being something in business, while Brian lived with his mother, who was not all that well off and originated from Ireland. The three of us got to become very good friends right through to the 6th form. Gerald, in fact, was to become the only one of my friends with whom I managed to stay in contact for some time after leaving school.
The war did not really encroach on our everyday life too much. There were the outward signs of the overcrowded buses, the black-out at night and the food rationing necessitating frequent queuing at the greengrocer’s and butcher’s shops. Evening visits to Stockport were also largely out of the question as the last buses used to leave Mersey Square around 9 o’clock in the evening. This became less important as we got into the 2nd and 3rd form, by which time everybody had bicycles, which we were able to use on the open road. My first bike was a second-hand machine, with 24-inch wheels. We had got this from our friendly odd job man, Mr Potts, who lived near the nursing home where Thomas was born. It cost £2.10s.0d and was to serve me well right through my years at Stockport School.
It was on that bike, not long after I got it, that Sam Heywood and I decided to go on a day trip to Chester and back. I well remember setting off from home, cycling to Stockport where I met up with Sam, and embarking on our expedition to Chester, a distance of about 40 miles. All went reasonably well in the morning until we got to the long, uphill, stretch leading up to Sandiway. There we were forced to dismount and walk for what seemed an endless drag. Wisely, we took the opportunity there to stop by the roadside and have the sandwiches we had brought for our lunch. Suitably refreshed, we were able to continue the rest of the journey to our destination. A couple of hours there and we turned back for home. This return journey seemed much easier somehow, for I have no recollection of anything else going wrong, except that by the time we got back to Stockport I was suffering badly from the hard racing saddle which had come with the bike. I stayed the night at Sam’s and made my way home the next day, determined to replace the bike with a much more forgiving saddle. Long distance outings by bike were very popular at the time, enthusiasts being very happy to make a day trip all the way to distant Southport. In my case, having been to Chester and back satisfied my long distance cycling ambitions and subsequently used my bike only for necessary journeys to Stockport, or Maine Road, or even Manchester city centre occasionally.
So, in spite of everything, we did lead a very enjoyable, normal, life. We could go swimming at the Marple baths during the summer months (the pool being covered up during the winter months and turned into a dance floor) or visit the local library, which had a wide range of books that we all seemed to take advantage of. Then there was the rec (the recreation ground) and, of course, The Regent cinema, which would eventually show all the films that had previously been screened at Stockport and Manchester. Prices there were quite modest at 6d downstairs, 9d upstairs and 3d, half price, for children, downstairs. Saturday evening was the highlight for the cinema, which was when the manager paraded in his best suit and ensured that the proper sort of decorum was observed and that noise was kept down so that everyone could ‘listen to the pictures’.
We also managed to entertain ourselves constructively in numerous ways, the Meccano construction toys being one of the most popular. This really was one of the very best practical introductions to mechanical engineering. Not only did Meccano come in a range of 10 sizes of kits of selected parts, but it was also readily possible to buy individual pieces at very modest prices – the local newsagent in Marple holding a good stock, for example. There were straight pieces of varying lengths, L-section members, flat panels, wheels, gear wheels, worm and pinion gears, clockwork motors, electric motors and many more specialised items. There was also the monthly Meccano Magazine, which, at 6d was avidly read and exchanged amongst the many Meccano enthusiasts at school. It was possible to build virtually anything, fixed or moving. Cranes of various configurations were always popular. Today’s Lego does bear faint comparison with what Meccano had to offer in so far as it is widely available, but it is nowhere near as versatile and requires many, many more specialised, costly, components. It has, rightly, been claimed that Meccano made a major contribution to the training and education of engineers of the post-war times by making engineering fun and enjoyable. There is nothing around in the 21st century with a similar influence, even though Meccano (now originating from France) has attempted to make a somewhat low-key comeback. There are, unfortunately, now too many alternatives with which require much less skill, effort and concentration to easily construct inferior products.
Complementary to the Meccano Magazine was the Hobbies Weekly, at only 2d or, later, 3d a week. This was primarily for wood working enthusiasts and for fretsaw users in particular. The Hobbies Weekly included detailed plans each week for a wide variety of objects to make – cabinets, shelves, model cars and other vehicles. The tool kit required was quite simple, consisting basically of little more than a fretsaw and a simple drill though other tools like small planes, chisels and ‘G clamps’ would also come in useful. Hobbies also produced an Annual, which was really an illustrated catalogue listing all the various do-it-yourself kits available from Messrs Hobbies, at Dereham in Norfolk, as well as a wide range of raw materials and desirable tools which they marketed. The highlight of the tools section was the treadle operated fretsaw, or even the electrically powered fretsaw. It was always my ambition to own one of these, but that was not to be. Hobbies had a shop in Piccadilly, Manchester, just below London Road railway station (which has since been re-born as Manchester Piccadilly station) and whenever I was in Manchester I would make a point of calling there. This was not so much to buy anything, for funds were always short, but rather to get ideas for what I could do with what was available to me.
My own resources in terms of raw materials consisted mainly of wooden boxes scrounged from the greengrocer. Orange boxes were highly prized, for they provided approximately 10 inch square end panels, about 5/8 inch thick, and half a dozen 30 inch by 4 inch boards, roughly 3/16 inch thick. I got to be quite expert at making 1/72nd scale model aeroplanes out of these. The main problem, here, was to find suitable aircraft which could be made out of these thicknesses of timber – the wings in particular. Fuselages fatter than 5/8 inch could always be made by gluing multiple end piece thicknesses together. Although orange boxes were the most useful, some of the apple boxes would, however, also be used at times, particularly as these offered a further range of wood thicknesses. My ‘workshop’ for all this woodworking was in our kitchen / living room, where we had a sideboard with a work surface which must have come from a butchers shop, for it had a beautiful 3 inch thick, whitewood, working surface which was ideal for use as a work bench and could even accommodate a small vice.
Looking back then, it must be reasonable to assume that it was the applications from the Meccano Magazine and Hobbies Weekly of those wartime days that instilled into me that life-long attraction of engineering in general and aviation and aeroplanes in particular.
School Certificate – the Goal
From September 1941, my school reports show that I was finding the elevated position of being in form 2C more testing than 1D. In fact, by December of that year I came 32nd in a class of 38 boys, the average age of which was about one year less than mine. That position, based on the total marks scored, should be qualified, however, for it would seem that I was absent for the crucial General Science examination, with a consequent reduction of total score, which was the ultimate measure of one’s position in the class. My best subjects would seem to have been Algebra, Geometry and French, in all of which I scored more than 60 per cent. I suspect that my main problem was that I was loath to make the extra effort required to do well and I needed the stimulus of a lowly position to persuade me ‘to do better’. This was a common comment from my teachers that my mother had got used to over the years, both back in Czechoslovakia and now, here in England. However, by the end of that year I had obviously made more of an effort, coming out 18th in what was now a class of 36. Although my marks as a whole did not look markedly different, they did this time record a higher proportion relative to the best achieved in the class. On that basis I now did reasonably well in English Language, General Science and ‘Manual Work’, with lows in Geography and Arithmetic. However, Mrs Spencer’s ’General Progress’ comment had now improved from Passable to Satisfactory, which got me safely into form 3C.
The form master in 3C was Mr Thorpe or Jimmy Thorpe as he was generally referred to. His subjects were History and English, and he commanded respect by his strictness and fairness. More about him anon. As far as Form 3C was concerned, however, this started off as a class of 35. Here I now came out at 14th place in December (1942) and improved my position to 2nd place at the end of that school year. Looking at the results now, a regular pattern emerges from these. I came top in Geometry and near the top in History, the latter largely due to Jimmy Thorpe’s good teaching, for he made the subject interesting, gave good notes and conducted, regular, weekly tests. With ‘Very Good’ General Progress behind me, I was once more promoted, this time to 4B, for my final year leading up to the School Certificate examinations. Our form mistress there was Mrs Mary Byrne, whose speciality was English. My progress there was judged ‘Satisfactory’ with good marks achieved in Arithmetic, Geometry, English Language and Physics at the mock School Certificate examinations in April 1944.
After all that, sitting the actual School Certificate examinations of the Northern Universities Joint Matriculation Board in June was just the culmination of four years’ effort which was approached without any undue excitement or, indeed, trepidation. I had always worked just hard enough to do reasonably well, lacking the ultimate ambition to reach the very top. I never enjoyed just learning masses of facts, preferring instead to learn what stimulated me and/or to understand the underlying principles, to allow me to reason problems out. Hence my attraction to the sciences and Mathematics. My final results reflected these qualities. I achieved passes in English Language, English Literature, Chemistry and Art, with Credits in Mathematics, Physics and History. I regret to say that I failed French, perhaps because I was used to learning languages with less effort. I take no great credit, however, for getting a Distinction (Very Good) in German. The German examination was the one and only one which I finished in under the allocated time, feeling there was nothing more to be said after reading my papers through three times. In fact, I was rather sorry for Mr Sherratt when he was given the task of taking me through the oral part of the examination, as it was clearly a much bigger ordeal for him than it was for me.
And so, at the age of 16, five years after leaving the country of my birth and nearly five years since coming to England, I had, clearly, settled down here as an accepted, more or less equal, member of the tribe. I had overcome any language problems that might have held me back at school and I was obviously ready to be fully settled in.
Sixth Form at Mile End
During the holidays that summer of 1944, with the School Certificate behind me, and sixth form to look forward to, I embarked on another adventure with the school by joining a group going to Farming Camp for a couple of weeks. This took place somewhere not far from the county town Hereford, where we were accommodated in tents – six to a tent if I remember correctly. The object of the exercise was to help with the harvesting of Worcester Permain apples, the main crop of that area, and the much more back-breaking job of picking potatoes from the ground. It was certainly healthy work but did us no harm and, what is more important, introduced us to another local produce, rough cider. This was the ‘home produced’ variety from the farm and certainly had a very distinctive kick. In fact one did not have to take what would normally be considered an excessive amount to finish up completely paralytic. In fact, that and a Saturday visit to Hereford itself are my main remaining memories.
There was one other small bonus I discovered on the farm, which was a goodly supply of lovely big white mushrooms. I was no expert on these, but they did look appetising. So on the last day I gathered a bagful and took them home. Fortunately my mother recognised them as a superior edible variety and we were able to enjoy a luxury not normally available at that time. Happy days!
The time soon came once again to return to the routine of school life, albeit in the Sixth Form – Lower Sixth to be precise – and to address myself to the prospect of sitting the Higher School Certificate (HSC) examination. This was for those pupils from the A and B streams who had taken their School Certificate, and of whom possibly two thirds (say 40) continued their education at this school. The C and D streams from year 4 went on to form 5 from where the boys could take their examinations at the end of that extra year. However, I was in the Lower Sixth. This, I imagine worked in a very similar manner to current Sixth Form colleges, except that our numbers were very much smaller. Consequently lessons in individual subjects involved relatively small groups of students – mainly smaller than 20 – as everyone took only four subjects in that year, with the intention of dropping one of these at the Intermediate Higher School Certificate level at the end of the year. I chose the Science route with Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Physics, and German – this last one to be dropped at the intermediate level.
Who’s Who on the staff
Not all the teachers at Stockport School made lasting impressions on me, so the list is by no means exhaustive. It being wartime, we had a predominance of women teachers, all well qualified. As the war progressed, the school seemed to attract more young women, which seemed to have the incidental effect of relaxing the relationships between pupils and teachers. In fact one young woman did not last very long, having struck up too close a friendship with one of the sixth form boys.
As mentioned earlier, the Headmaster at the time that I joined the school was Mr M J (Joe) Cook, of whom we didn’t see too much outside the daily morning assembly, but who was generally respected and regarded as being a fair man. There were times, though, when meeting up with him in his study was not particularly pleasurable as some teachers, particularly some of the female ones, used him as a last resort on disciplinary matters with which they were unable to cope and sent miscreants to him for punishment. Corporal punishment was still the accepted norm at that time and a visit to Mr Cook would involve a few strokes of the cane about your backside in the lobby outside his office. I don’t suppose he enjoyed doing this and being elderly he didn’t actually put much force into his ‘strokes’.
Then there was ‘Jimmy’ Thorpe, who taught me History so well. He was a cultured person, moved (we were led to believe) in some upper class circles of Stockport and, by all accounts, was on very good terms with the local, Tory, MP. He had this reputation for strictness, but as so often happened, this reputation was earned by not exercising his powers to wield the cane. In fact, I don’t think he ever caned anybody while I was there.
This reputation for severity also applied to ‘Taffy’ (Roland) Davies, the senior Mathematics master, who also happened to live in Marple on Claremont Avenue in Rose Hill. I didn’t really get to know Roland until I reached the sixth form, when he probably achieved the greatest influence on me. In this period in the run up to School Certificate, however, his reputation reigned supreme in the junior part of the school. It was there, probably in my fourth year, that one of our lady teachers decided that I deserved appropriate chastisement and instructed me to go to the staff room and request Mr Davies to cane me. One obeyed such instructions and I duly presented myself to Taffy, who fetched his cane, took me into the wash room opposite, told me to bend down as was usual, and promptly laid into a wash basin with his cane four times. ‘Let this be a lesson to you’, he said loudly, and adding ‘go out looking suitably sore’. I don’t think he ever caned a boy. I got to be very fond of him.
Our Geography master was Mr Sherratt, generally known as Skeege for some unknown reason. He was in his late middle age and was quite unable to control a class of lively boys, mainly because he would loose his temper too easily. The poor man had reputedly served in the navy in submarines during the First World War and survived a fatal attack on the vessel, during which he came to the surface in an air bubble, so the story went. As a result he had never been the same since, at least that was the rumour that went around the school. He should really have received more sympathy from the boys, but we didn’t appreciate that the way we perhaps should have done.
These were the main male teachers with the exception of Mr Colclough, who took us for PT and Games, not particularly favourite subjects of mine, and Mr Emmett, who ran the Woodwork classes. Mr Colclough was young and agile, why he wasn’t in the forces nobody knew. As I was never one for a workout in the gym, or Games, which meant football, or worse still, cricket, I never developed a relationship with him. Mr Emmett on the other hand was a much more agreeable man as far as I was concerned, and as Commanding Officer of the school’s Air Training Corps squadron, I got to appreciate him in later years.
Of the ladies, the better ones were Mrs Nixon who taught Science, Miss Graham who taught English, Mrs Mary Byrne who taught me English Literature, I think, and a young woman, Jessie Sellars who taught Mathematics. There were others, whose names and faces escape me, except that the one who was trying to teach me French failed miserably. I, who having by that time spoken four languages (German, Czech, Polish and English), should have had an aptitude for a fifth one, had she only been able to instil some interest in me.
Mary Byrne achieved a degree of recognition in that Peter Barkworth, who in later life became quite a well-known actor, credited her with encouraging him with his acting. He was good, even in those days, and I remember him particularly in two of the school plays in which he played the leading part – Macbeth and Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra.
Other teachers, women, came and went, for there seemed to be quite a turnover during the war and a shortage of men. Sadly also, Mr Cook retired in July 1944, his place being taken the following year by Mr J P Yarwood, of whom no memories remain.
Vogel Vault 