Did You Live In Shiregreen?

[Norrie]

Hi Janner,

Headmistress was Miss Copley (C.M. Copley), as you say, a lovely lady.

 

My first day there was a bit startling. It must have been January, '39 or '40. Along with our mothers in a very frosty and misty quadrangle, we were just inside some double doors off Hatfield House Lane awaiting Miss Copley to greet us. From another corner of the quad where the staff room and kitchen was, came the sound of a girl screaming. A little girl ran out into the quad, ablaze from head to foot. She'd been sent to light the gas under the huge kettle they used to use and had obviously been a bit careless with the match (or a blow-back from the gas ring). Even her hair was ablaze.

Someone hurried us down a side corridor out of sight of the tragedy (where Miss Harvey used to have a class room - and probably Miss Scott).

 

I've no idea what became of the poor girl; she was never mentioned again. Startling though it was, it didn't seem to influence me at all on my first day.

I started in Miss Anderson's class (she later married to become Mrs Bellinger). She was an utterly sweet and gentle young lady (I used to take her Lillies of the Valley from our garden which she loved- better than an apple!)

The teachers I remember were:

Miss Copley (Head)

Miss Anderson,

Miss Cobley,

Miss Bevan,

Miss Harvey,

Miss Scott,

Mrs Williams,

Miss Base (later Mrs Gilson) (the 'top'class teacher)

 

I'm sure I've missed some. A man (the first male teacher, a pleasant man) started at the end of the war, can't remember his name.

 

'Pop' Winfrow and his wife were the caretakers. I've a funny story about him sometime if you want to hear it.

 

At the time I started school, they'd just built the underground air-raid shelters. The excavated clay was in a huge pile at the back of the school, which was out of bounds, but somehow we contrived to play on it 'out of hours'. good for sledging in winter. Hatfield House Lane 'Senior' school was under construction. One of my son'e taught maths there in recent years for a while, by which time it had been re-named Firth Park School, an odd choice. But your old school -the 'redcaps' at The Brushes, had become derelict and eventually burned down. It's some sort of campus now.

 

One of my best pals lived just across from HHL on Torksey Road, Graham Pratt. A London evacuee came to live near him called Shirley Wells; all the boys were in love with her. As recently as 1974, the Wells family still lived there. Norma Sturdy (my heartthrob), also lived nearby.

 

I can still recall many of my classmates names with bit of jogging. The sapling trees outside the school are of a very mature size now which makes the school look smaller and they've taken out the'high' iron railings and double gates and replaced them with wire mesh; just not the same.

Good to hear from you Janner. Any memories I can help with, just let me know.

 

---------- Post added 19-02-2016 at 18:11 ----------

 

Hi Janner,

Headmistress was Miss Copley (C.M. Copley), as you say, a lovely lady.

 

My first day there was a bit startling. It must have been January, '39 or '40. Along with our mothers in a very frosty and misty quadrangle, we were just inside some double doors off Hatfield House Lane awaiting Miss Copley to greet us. From another corner of the quad where the staff room and kitchen was, came the sound of a girl screaming. A little girl ran out into the quad, ablaze from head to foot. She'd been sent to light the gas under the huge kettle they used to use and had obviously been a bit careless with the match (or a blow-back from the gas ring). Even her hair was ablaze.

Someone hurried us down a side corridor out of sight of the tragedy (where Miss Harvey used to have a class room - and probably Miss Scott).

I've no idea what became of the poor girl; she was never mentioned again. Startling though it was, it didn't seem to influence me at all on my first day.

 

I started in Miss Anderson's class (she later married to become Mrs Bellinger). She was an utterly sweet and gentle young lady (I used to take her Lillies of the Valley from our garden which she loved- better than an apple!)

 

The teachers I remember were:

Miss Copley (Head)

Miss Anderson,

Miss Cobley,

Miss Bevan,

Miss Harvey,

Miss Scott,

Mrs Williams,

Miss Base (later Mrs Gilson) (the 'top'class teacher)

 

I'm sure I've missed some. A man (the first male teacher, a pleasant man) started at the end of the war, can't remember his name.

 

'Pop' Winfrow and his wife were the caretakers. I've a funny story about him sometime if you want to hear it.

 

At the time I started school, they'd just built the underground air-raid shelters. The excavated clay was in a huge pile at the back of the school, which was out of bounds, but somehow we contrived to play on it 'out of hours', good for sledging in winter. Hatfield House Lane 'Senior' school was under construction. One of my son'e taught maths there in recent years for a while, by which time it had been re-named Firth Park School, an odd choice. But your old school -the 'redcaps' at The Brushes, had become derelict and eventually burned down. It's some sort of campus now.

 

One of my best pals lived just across from HHL on Torksey Road, Graham Pratt. A London evacuee came to live near him called Shirley Wells; all the boys were in love with her. As recently as 1974, the Wells family still lived there. Norma Sturdy (my heartthrob), also lived nearby.

 

I can still recall many of my classmates names with bit of jogging. The sapling trees outside the school are of a very mature size now which makes the school look smaller and they've taken out the'high' iron railings and double gates and replaced them with wire mesh; just not the same.

 

Good to hear from you Janner. Any memories I can help with, just let me know.

 

---------- Post added 19-02-2016 at 18:12 ----------

 

Sorry, sent it twice.

[Janner]

Thanks for the info Norrie. My memory is not so good these days. I must have started at Hatfield House Lane about 41, I was 9 then. Previously we had lived in Shirehall Rd. & I went to school at Gregg House Rd. The only class mates I can remember at Hatfield House Lane were twin boys called Ebbs. We had auditions for the Cathedral choir , I was selected & was in the choir for a few years. The school had a square pond in the middle, how was that managed? My Father (for political reasons) wouldn't let me join the Scouts, there was an alternative organisation called the Wood Craft Folk, meetings were in the school hall. Those were the days of wooden steel nibbed pens & inkwells, life was much simpler then, they were happy days even though we were at war.

[Norrie]

Hello Janner,

We've quite a bit in common one way or another. One of my Aunts lived on Shirehall Road (at the Beck Road end more or less).

 

I too joined the Woodcraft Folk, but we met over the post office shop down Bellhouse Road and sat cross-legged round a 'log fire' mad of red crepe paper, witha red bulb and thick twigs nailed together, singing. We went on hikes to the Clarion Hut (also a cycling club) just outside Sheffield. We'd buy a hot penny oxo drink in a pot mug. Like the Woodcraft Folk, this was a socialist organisation named after the Clarion Socialist Newspaper. It was many years before I learned of it's political affiliations, by which time I'd left and joined the Life Boys (later Boys brigade).

 

I'm a bit mystified about the school you mention on Gregg House Road. Hartley Brook School at the bottom of Gregg House is the only one I can think of, it wouldn't have been Hatfield House Lane senior School I don't think at the dates you mention.( I've just looked at the map and one end of Shirehall Road runs into Hartley Brook, so I suspect that's the one).

 

 

My brother Les went to Hartley Brook night school (he was 13 years older than me). He died in WW2 in a Jap POW camp on the Burma railway.

 

I still like using dipping pens as we did at HHL. I rose to the dizzy height of Ink Monitor in year 4. I had to fill the inkwells up using a device like a miniature watering can - but with a thin spout of course.

 

My pal and I were permitted to buy chemicals from Preston's Chemists in town. One chemical was called rock carbide and was used in the old acetylene cycle lamps. It gives off flamable gas when mixed with water.

It resembles small grey chippings and we always carried a few crumbs about with us. If there was someone we didn't like in class, we'd slip a couple of chippings into their inkwell under the little brass slide. It gave off the most obnoxious bad egg stink.

The teacher went sniffing round the classroom to locate the offensive odour and found what she thought was the source. She assumed the lad sitting there had 'caused' it, and made him run twice round the play-ground 'to clean himself'.

 

No one ever caught on to our wicked pranks with the Rock carbide.

 

While we're on sordid stuff, I'll mention pop Winfrow, the catretaker I mentioned in an earlier post. After dinner break one day, we all crowded back into the classroom in year four. Someone had contrived to lure a stray dog in to the room. It got very excited and was barking madly. The girls began to shriek and someone tried to capture it. The poor creature became very bewildered, jumped onto one of the desk seats a the back of the class-room and in it's panic delivered a steaming brown mass onto the seat just as Mrs Gilson the teacher arrived. The dog was duly enticed outside and ran off. The teacher asked me to fetch the caretaker and tell him that a dog had had an accident on the back seat.

He said to me what kind of accident? I'm the caretaker, not a vet , you need a vet. When I explained that a bucket and shovel was all he needed, he became quite exasperated at being asked to perform something that was outside his remit. But he did it with much muttering.

Happy days as you say Janner

[woody-2shoes]

MY name is Bryan and i grew up in Shire Green from 1933 and i have written a couple of books on it.

[Voldy]

Hi woody-2shoes, glad to see you're still active! How is the next book progressing ? There are still plenty of "oldies" reading the posts on here as you have found! Voldy.

[Joeemcon]

Love your books Bryan .

[stpetre]

I'm not from Shiregreen but was friends with the Wheldon family (Glynn, Clive, dad Harry.) and the Short's ( George and Jack.) anyone recall them ?

[derfblade]

I'm not from Shiregreen but was friends with the Wheldon family (Glynn, Clive, dad Harry.) and the Short's ( George and Jack.) anyone recall them ?

Jack died probably 20 years ago and George passed away last year after a long illness.

[Tigerfan]

I lived on Homestead Road from 1963 - 1980. Went to Hartley Brook School then Firth Park Comprehensive.

 

Are you Pamela Walters lived at number 88 ish ?

[Janner]

Norrie, my parents moved into a house in Shirehall Rd. (246?) early in 1933, I was born in Nov.32, so I was a small baby. I believe we were the first occupiers in the new built house. I started school in 36/37 at the Infant school in Gregg House Rd. When I was in Sheffield a few years ago, I took photos of that school & the Junior School on Hatfield House Lane, which I attended when we moved house to Hatffield House Lane (108?). I attach the photos taken. You can see that the infant school I went to has it's front gate secured & the entrance door behind the gate has been bricked up. When I saw the school on Hatfield House Lane, it looked different, then I realised the trees had grown big. Lovely schools , happy childhood in spite of the War. I cannot work out how to send the photo attachments, will try later.

 

---------- Post added 24-10-2016 at 16:34 ----------

 

I am sorry, for the life of me I cannot find out how to send an attachment with my posting. Can anyone help?