First years at Grammar School

 Acklam Hall Grammar School

I remember the day the term 11 plus was mentioned.

It was one spring day and dad said “son”, he always called me son, your 11 plus exam is soon. Are you prepared? Well, the answer was no, I had not even heard of it. Apparently, it is a written exam. The results of which determined whether you follow a route to university education or secondary school and a trades career like plumbing or building.

 A sort of intelligence test as they called them in the 1950’s. The day arrived and we were given a pamphlet full of questions. Of which we had a set period of time to complete. You need to remember that in the 1950’s the UK was not metric, far from it. It had its own weird set of standards. For instance, money, pounds, shillings, and pence. 12 pennies to a shilling, 20 shillings to a pound plus half pennies and farthings. Worse was length with fractions of an inch, feet, and yards stop. 3/8 of an inch, 2 feet, 6 inches, etc. Then there was weights and volume. 16 ounces to a pound, 14 pounds to a stone. Then we had volume. Cups, pints, quarts, and gallons. All very confusing, yet the 11 plus had questions like “You have a pint glass and a quart bottle. How many times must you fill them to produce 2 1/2 gallons of water”! What! Two cups equal one pint. 2 pints equal 1 quart. 4 quarts equal one gallon. Needless to say, Dad received a letter on my performance. I had failed. But marginally so, I was sent for interview where they proceeded to ask me the same dumb questions, but this time I needed quick mental arithmetic in order to give a response.

I remember an elderly teacher trying to help me with pints and quarts. But I returned home despondent, Sure I had failed, but no I had passed and my route to grammar school and higher education was secured.

[1]

If I thought Whinney Banks School was different to Bay School, Acklam Hall Grammar School was on another Planet. It was an old Georgian manor in its own grounds with Adams ceilings and enormous grounds with playing pitches for cricket and rugby.

 [2]

Secondly there was uniform, complete set of clothes. Only our underpants were our own. Socks. Shirt, trousers, (shorts for juniors with long socks), blazer with badge, school tie and cap! Without them there were penalties! Secondly, it was a boy only school, no girls. Just as I was starting to get interested in the opposite sex.

Thirdly, it was run on military lines with punishment. If you deviated from the rules, something I seem to do all the time! The first-year intake was divided into three classes, A, B&C, and the membership of a class seemed to depend on the 11 plus exam results.

You can guess where I was after my dismal 11 plus performance. You are right 1C. And soon to be bottom of that class. So, I had the distinction of being the dumbest in my year, which meant in year one, bottom of the whole school! Our day started in the Assembly Hall on the first floor of the main building. Very grand, with Adam ceiling and a stage at one end.

[3]

We all trooped in class by class facing the stage. As you can imagine, there was a lot of shoving and pushing and a constant babble of noise, only silenced by the arrival of a gowned headmaster on the stage, and the shouted command to be silent. All the teachers were present in their black gowns, like Ravens ready to pounce on their prey. Douglas, stop fighting, said our class teacher from the side. Then the headmaster told us of the latest school news before intoning a prayer, and we all sang a hymn from our hymn sheet. So, we then dispersed to various classrooms and teaching began.

I soon found out that abstract subjects such as science were difficult and mathematics virtually impossible. X’s and Y’s did not seem to represent anything I could recognise. And worse, we are expected to do arithmetic exercises on them and substitute numerical values for X and Y to produce a graph! I mean X ^2 + 2 X y = 10. What is that?

Worst of all were art classes where I met my nemesis. We were to paint a portrait of a woman who sat half naked on a stool. Where to start? Without guidance, I drew a “matchstick person”, with straight lines for legs and arms. This got me a clip over the ear and ordered to leave the art class immediately and never return. The outcome was to be placed in the woodwork class where I excelled. However, the teacher was very strict and threw pieces of wood towards us if we did not follow orders.

One boy, Hilton, was struggling to follow the procedure to mark out his wood and was rebuffed by the teacher who shouted so we could all hear. “Stop, you stupid boy. You might as well cut your wood into small pieces”! Dutifully, Hilton, sawed his project into small pieces and waited until the next inspection by the teacher. The result was as expected. “You stupid boy”, said the teacher. Red in the face he grabbed Hilton by the ear and threw him out of the class, never to return! Perhaps all of us in the class were problem pupils. We certainly caused chaos as we progressed 1C to 2C to 3C.

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[1] Douglas. John, View of Acklam Hall.

[2] Douglas, John, Peter and John in Junior School Uniform. Taken in the Garden.

[3] Douglas, John, Class 1C.

Blue Eyes

 

My mothers early years - written by my brother Peter Douglas

We were in my Father’s Day cabin.  He wanted me to meet the officers prior to the ship sailing across the Atlantic.  Mother had died 3 years before and I had already travelled on a couple of voyages with my shipmaster father.  This promised to be as exciting as the others. No doubt Dad hoped that somewhere I would find someone who was prepared to put up with what he called my feisty nature and marry me before my 30th birthday.  There wasn’t long to go.  Maybe there would be someone in Savannah our first stop, someone like Rhett Butler the hero in the new book I was reading.

 

The Chief Engineer was like so many other engineers I had met, a dour Scotsman, the First Mate a Geordie, and the Wireless Operator from Hull.  The second mate was on watch, but my father called the Third Mate up from supervising the last of the cargo loading.  

Mum is in the middle and Dad sitting to the right

He was a slim young man of medium height but tall to me.  He had dark wavy hair and a pair of the bluest of blue twinkly eyes.  Eyes that I had seen before, but where?  He was called George, and he was born in Whitby, a local lad then as far as I was concerned.  And then I knew where and when I had seen those eyes many years before.

 

 

My grandfather William had been a shipmaster.  He had retired just as the Armistice was declared 6 years before.  I was living with him and my grandmother at the time as Mother was away visiting my father, whose ship was docked in Amsterdam.  Granddad did his rent collecting alone, till he hurt his hand, and this Saturday I had gone with him.  I felt very important.  I had finished grammar school a few weeks ago, and hoped I could make a career in music.  My job today though was to record the money Grandad received into the rent books.  Grandmama had made sure I was smartly dressed, not like my preferred tomboyish style.  I had on a navy-blue skirt and a white blouse; my long brown hair was plaited neatly and each plait was tied with a white ribbon.  My polished black shoes had a neat strap across white ankle socks.

 Leaving the house I struggled to keep up with my grandad’s tall rangy stride as we climbed the bank towards the station. We caught the 10:30 train and arrived in Whitby after half an hour.  I never tired of the ride along the cliff edge, watching the sea breaking against the rocks below.  Today though the sea was calm below a clear blue sky.  Soon the train crossed over the viaduct high above the river Esk before reversing and dropped down into the valley and Whitby Town station.  As I stepped down onto the platform, I noticed a speck of soot on my white blouse.  Without thinking I brushed it off leaving a dark smear across the cotton.  Somehow, I seemed to attract dirt.

 ‘Never mind,’ chuckled my grandfather, ‘I’ve got some on my sling, so we are a right pair.’  He gestured to the triangular cotton bandage supporting his right arm.  ‘Let’s be off and get the job done, then we’ll see what treat we can find for ourselves.’

 There were only four houses to visit, but they were well scattered. We visited both sides of the river, never going very far before my Granddad stopped to chat with someone he knew.  When he was at sea a lot of the ships had been built in Whitby and owned by local people who would band together to buy a 64^th share.  They knew and appreciated him as someone who had kept their investment afloat. 

 It was almost 12:00 before we had visited the last house and I had made the last, almost neat, entry into the rent books.  Returning across the bridge Granddad said that he always met the Chief Pilot and shared a drink with him before returning home.  He would still do this, but before then he would buy me a soft drink and an iced bun.  I felt quite grown up as we sat in the smart café and a waitress in a black dress, white pinny and a white laced headband served us.  Grandad just had a cup of tea.  He chatted mostly about his greatest passion, his garden, which I loved to help him with.  His dad had been a farm labourer and he had learned the joy of growing things at an early age.

 After Grandad had settled the bill and received a big smile for the generous tip he left for the waitress, we walked to the harbour.  As ever the port was full of herring drifters, moored three and four deep against the harbour wall.  The smell of fish was everywhere, but one with which I was familiar.  We met the Chief Pilot outside his house along the quayside.  I was told to take a little walk along the pier and meet them back at the Pilot’s House in half an hour. 

 I watched the work of the fishermen for a while as they slung ashore the boxes of fish and tidied the nets.  Beyond the herring drifters a small rowing boat was being handled by a bunch of young boys.  They were jumping in and out of the boat, swimming around and splashing in the harbour.  It looked as though they were enjoying themselves.

 The sound of a band attracted me to the bandstand at the entrance to the West Pier.  I didn’t mind brass bands although I much preferred the piano and church organ.  One of the cornet players was funny, every time he blew really hard his cheeks bulged out like two rosy apples.  The band, dressed in black and gold uniforms, was quite good.  Their instruments twinkled in the sunlight as they played a few Gilbert & Sullivan tunes.  I lost track of the time and had to scurry back along the quayside.

 They were waiting for me near the pilot’s house and as I joined them from one side a group of young boys walked along the quayside from behind them.  I think they were the group who had been splashing about in the harbour. As they drew level the Chief Pilot gestured to one of the boys.

 ‘Come here, boy, I want you to meet Captain Emmerson.’

 Turning to Grandad he said, ‘This is one of my grandsons, he says he wants to go to sea when he is old enough’.

 Grandad shook his rather grubby hand and told him to work hard at his schooling and he may be lucky enough to see all the wonders of the world that he had seen.  He then introduced me, saying, ‘This young lady is my granddaughter Rachel’.

 He looked at me. His blue eyes twinkled under a shock of wavy hair and sat amidst a decidedly dirty face.

 ‘Hello Miss’, he offered his hand to shake.

 My face must have shown my disgust at the state of it, but I took it.  He grinned and then said, ‘You’ve got some soot on your blouse.’

 I think I must have blushed because he grinned even more, and my Granddad looked away.

 ‘Must be off for lunch, Grampa, good morning to you all’ the urchin said, and striding past me gave a little tug on one of my plaits.

 ‘I’ll get you for that someday,’ I vowed to myself.

 

 

Now here he was again, no longer an urchin, but a good-looking young man in his early twenties.  I realised that my desire, for revenge for that hair pull, had changed.