Central Technical School

[coalandcoke]

I think the toy shop you mention was Gordon Joel's (at least it was in the 1950's).

Edited January 29, 2010 by coalandcoke

[HPSec]

I think the toy shop you mention was Gordon Joel's (at least it was in the 1950's).

 

Many thanks, Coalandcoke. I'm sure you are right. I'd thought about it many times without being able to remember.

Edited February 1, 2010 by HPSec
typo corrected

[coalandcoke]

The reason I remember it was because when I was at Tech model railway stuff was beginning to become available and I spent most of my lunch hours drooling over Hornby and Triang models in the basement of the shop.

[sandie]

Ah, dear Hilldweller and Sandie - Wisewood in the early ’60s!

 

I too look back on those days with a certain fondness – through (I have to say) rose-tinted spectacles because my overriding feeling is that I was a reluctant scholar. But now? The opportunity to learn! I see how wonderful that was - the opportunity “to learn how to learn”, Russell Ackoff might have said.

 

A W Goodfellow (the immaculately suited, proud, straight-backed head teacher);

Miss Ballard;

Miss Revill (do I remember her or have I merely picked up the legend);

Hodgkinson and cross-country over Wadsley Common;

Croft (and the white slipper incident);

Richardson;

Mossingdew;

Turton;

Haydock (famed for the phrases, “You’ll get some of my peppermint stick!” or “You’ll get a big dig, lad!” or for forgetting to put out his pipe before putting it in his thick tweed suit jacket pocket. The “peppermint stick” (you will recall) was a short, stiff cane. And the cat in his imagination that walked on the corridor roof below the clerestory lights! – that always got the point of his lesson, whereas (he believed) it went over the heads of us dummies. He was wrong (he was not a teacher in vain);

Miss Dexter;

Holmes;

Moffit;

Hartley (seriously ill perhaps, drinking soothing warm milk from a glass science beaker, but entertaining us with the pops and wheezes of some practical science experiments).

 

Cycling Proficiency!

 

It was at Wisewood in the playground there, I saw a teacher lead with a flat-handed left and connect with a flat-handed right. It made quite an impression and I was just a spectator. Seems like yesterday!

 

Croft (maths and football) and, in particular, Charlie Haydock (English) were certainly my making (into little more than a bag of nails) - fearfully strict but fair and with senses of humour. There was one other to whom I owe special thanks - Mrs J E Jarvis from the junior school. It was in the very last moment of leaving that institution. She and I were the last out of the J4 classroom and alongside each other in the corridor, and it was no more than a word of encouragement. She said the Big School was a new opportunity (that I should embrace). She praised my slight arty-crafty “skills” (I’d obviously given her next to no reason to think I might have academic ability) and we went our separate ways never to meet again, but I still remember the good in what she spoke.

 

At the Big School, the bright kids - including (I dare say), even then, the odd ones coached for the 11+ and the even odder one who had had elocution lessons (though I think we were all “working class”) - had been skimmed off to the Grammar Schools. Suddenly at the Big School my like had risen to the surface.

 

A sad sack like, Prescott, who endlessly moans that he failed the 11+ (and yet he still, for obscure reasons that escape me, became Deputy Prime Minister) castigates the Grammars. They were the best thing that ever happened to me. There was the half-day holiday after the exam, for a start. What I can’t understand is why there is not an 11+, a 12+, a 13+, a 14+, a 15+, 16+, 17+, 18+. In other words, I cannot understand why there is not Opportunity, Opportunity, Opportunity created at every level in Education, Education, Education - and in life in general.

 

I despise Education being used as a political football and I do firmly believe that it has stood still for the best part of fifty years – or gone backwards and forwards without making any significant progress.

 

Society’s expectation of Government is, that with a steady hand on the tiller, we shall see slight improvement – year on year. We don’t ask for much, but what a disappointment in large part!

 

Who was the woodwork teacher there? I think I owe him too. At Wisewood we might make the odd teapot stand - long cherished or not by our mothers.

 

At the Tech we made joints – all manner of halvings and dovetails and even a tusk tenon or a corner of a window frame. It was years later and once only that we were allowed to make something useful – a fishing stool - under the firm direction of “John Henry” Hunter – who would be respected (and is, in my mind even now) - or his less intimidating colleague, Mr Jarvis.

 

And downstairs in Holly Street (below the pavement lights, now gone, and the shadows that fell), the brickwork shop where Sam Crisp had a lengthy cane with the girth of a broom handle and was often heard to say things like, “5X, you’re getting in my hair! And you’d better get out of it!” Paints a strange picture in my mind as I think of us standing there in our boiler suits! Was there a bigger figure in the school, there in his grey smock, large brick trowel in hand – shoulders raised in anger? I grant you, Ron Underdown and Mr Hill were tall and made an impression in their black gowns.

 

The cane as, others have commented, was there – not much used, but used nevertheless. It was never used on me and I think I looked away at the point of contact when others got it. I saw tough kids cry sometimes, some deservedly - although I dare say, occasionally, by Sir’s mistake. I am reasonably sure that a more liberal education would have failed me. I don’t think I would have done the homework, if the teacher hadn’t had some sanctions. I think perhaps we are failing generations of scholars in the absence of discipline.

 

The Merit/De-merit system worked of course. The very best education would, in my opinion, be predicated on no more than encouragement.

 

As it happens, I’m writing on an historic day – Blair before Chilcot. The radio is playing in the background and I’m reminded of Albert Bun’s comments in the margin of my misguided essay which said something like, “You can be clever and still wrong!” I scored a zero. An uneasy peace rests on the Battle of the Boyn - even 400 hundred years passing. How long shall we be obliged to remember the lesser cause, and the folly, of Iraq? In my too easy acquiescence (to the likes of Blair) I find blood on my hands.

 

We were brought up on Crispin, but this day should be for ever remembered as Gilligan’s Day.

 

HPSec,

 

You have made my day, you describe Wisewood and the TECH to a tee.

Haydock was a very strict man, but I

[sandie]

Ah, dear Hilldweller and Sandie - Wisewood in the early ’60s!

 

I too look back on those days with a certain fondness – through (I have to say) rose-tinted spectacles because my overriding feeling is that I was a reluctant scholar. But now? The opportunity to learn! I see how wonderful that was - the opportunity “to learn how to learn”, Russell Ackoff might have said.

 

A W Goodfellow (the immaculately suited, proud, straight-backed head teacher);

Miss Ballard;

Miss Revill (do I remember her or have I merely picked up the legend);

Hodgkinson and cross-country over Wadsley Common;

Croft (and the white slipper incident);

Richardson;

Mossingdew;

Turton;

Haydock (famed for the phrases, “You’ll get some of my peppermint stick!” or “You’ll get a big dig, lad!” or for forgetting to put out his pipe before putting it in his thick tweed suit jacket pocket. The “peppermint stick” (you will recall) was a short, stiff cane. And the cat in his imagination that walked on the corridor roof below the clerestory lights! – that always got the point of his lesson, whereas (he believed) it went over the heads of us dummies. He was wrong (he was not a teacher in vain);

Miss Dexter;

Holmes;

Moffit;

Hartley (seriously ill perhaps, drinking soothing warm milk from a glass science beaker, but entertaining us with the pops and wheezes of some practical science experiments).

 

Cycling Proficiency!

 

It was at Wisewood in the playground there, I saw a teacher lead with a flat-handed left and connect with a flat-handed right. It made quite an impression and I was just a spectator. Seems like yesterday!

 

Croft (maths and football) and, in particular, Charlie Haydock (English) were certainly my making (into little more than a bag of nails) - fearfully strict but fair and with senses of humour. There was one other to whom I owe special thanks - Mrs J E Jarvis from the junior school. It was in the very last moment of leaving that institution. She and I were the last out of the J4 classroom and alongside each other in the corridor, and it was no more than a word of encouragement. She said the Big School was a new opportunity (that I should embrace). She praised my slight arty-crafty “skills” (I’d obviously given her next to no reason to think I might have academic ability) and we went our separate ways never to meet again, but I still remember the good in what she spoke.

 

At the Big School, the bright kids - including (I dare say), even then, the odd ones coached for the 11+ and the even odder one who had had elocution lessons (though I think we were all “working class”) - had been skimmed off to the Grammar Schools. Suddenly at the Big School my like had risen to the surface.

 

A sad sack like, Prescott, who endlessly moans that he failed the 11+ (and yet he still, for obscure reasons that escape me, became Deputy Prime Minister) castigates the Grammars. They were the best thing that ever happened to me. There was the half-day holiday after the exam, for a start. What I can’t understand is why there is not an 11+, a 12+, a 13+, a 14+, a 15+, 16+, 17+, 18+. In other words, I cannot understand why there is not Opportunity, Opportunity, Opportunity created at every level in Education, Education, Education - and in life in general.

 

I despise Education being used as a political football and I do firmly believe that it has stood still for the best part of fifty years – or gone backwards and forwards without making any significant progress.

 

Society’s expectation of Government is, that with a steady hand on the tiller, we shall see slight improvement – year on year. We don’t ask for much, but what a disappointment in large part!

 

Who was the woodwork teacher there? I think I owe him too. At Wisewood we might make the odd teapot stand - long cherished or not by our mothers.

 

At the Tech we made joints – all manner of halvings and dovetails and even a tusk tenon or a corner of a window frame. It was years later and once only that we were allowed to make something useful – a fishing stool - under the firm direction of “John Henry” Hunter – who would be respected (and is, in my mind even now) - or his less intimidating colleague, Mr Jarvis.

 

And downstairs in Holly Street (below the pavement lights, now gone, and the shadows that fell), the brickwork shop where Sam Crisp had a lengthy cane with the girth of a broom handle and was often heard to say things like, “5X, you’re getting in my hair! And you’d better get out of it!” Paints a strange picture in my mind as I think of us standing there in our boiler suits! Was there a bigger figure in the school, there in his grey smock, large brick trowel in hand – shoulders raised in anger? I grant you, Ron Underdown and Mr Hill were tall and made an impression in their black gowns.

 

The cane as, others have commented, was there – not much used, but used nevertheless. It was never used on me and I think I looked away at the point of contact when others got it. I saw tough kids cry sometimes, some deservedly - although I dare say, occasionally, by Sir’s mistake. I am reasonably sure that a more liberal education would have failed me. I don’t think I would have done the homework, if the teacher hadn’t had some sanctions. I think perhaps we are failing generations of scholars in the absence of discipline.

 

The Merit/De-merit system worked of course. The very best education would, in my opinion, be predicated on no more than encouragement.

 

As it happens, I’m writing on an historic day – Blair before Chilcot. The radio is playing in the background and I’m reminded of Albert Bun’s comments in the margin of my misguided essay which said something like, “You can be clever and still wrong!” I scored a zero. An uneasy peace rests on the Battle of the Boyn - even 400 hundred years passing. How long shall we be obliged to remember the lesser cause, and the folly, of Iraq? In my too easy acquiescence (to the likes of Blair) I find blood on my hands.

 

We were brought up on Crispin, but this day should be for ever remembered as Gilligan’s Day.

 

HPSec,

 

You have made my day, you describe Wisewood and the TECH to a tee.

Haydock was a very strict man, but I will always remember the history of North and South America. He used to get his hand printing unit out and churn out copies, this was the day before photocopies.

I think it was called a Gestetner.

 

All the best

[sandie]

Yes, you remind me, Carosio and David!

 

The walk as, I remember it, was from the corner of West Street and Leopold Street; down High Street; left down Vicar Lane (the name I’d forgotten until you mentioned it) passing Silverstones (DIY shop) on the right at the bottom; across Campo Lane; down Lee Croft, turning right at the bottom into Silver Street Head where our destination (“Cathedral School”) was on the right.

 

We must have got quite fit coming back up, and, if we took school dinners and had a lesson there, we must sometimes have been doing the trip a couple of times in a day – carrying our bags.

 

What was the toyshop with the recessed doorway called – going up High Street, near the top on the right?

 

Later, when we moved to Gleadless, we had “the Causeway” from the bus stop to the school, in all weathers – although, if you were at the senior end of the school then, you had a locker and perhaps didn’t have to carry all your books backwards and forwards (from one side of Sheffield to the other, on two buses each way, if you were like me).

 

Remember going to King Ted’s swimming baths on the hired double-deckers?

 

Of course (I needed the prompt), having left the steep pitch at Ringinglow behind, we had the wonderful new sports pitches and the tennis courts at Gleadless.

 

What strikes me is how the old buildings, so dismal, so Dickensian in our day, there in the middle of town, are Listed (part of Sheffield’s heritage now) whereas those magnificent new buildings at Gleadless, of the late ‘60s, light and airy, have already been demolished for a number of years (probably before the City Council had re-paid the loan capital).

 

And these days, we knock down school buildings and build new ones costing millions – having some strange, but misguided belief that Education (that god) is in the hardware (not in the quality of teaching, not in discipline, and not in encouragement). And I say this, as a building professional with, you are entitled to think, a vested interest in construction!

 

 

HSPec correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding for the reason to demolish the Gleedles school/site was because of Blue an White Asbestos.

It was a late 60's Clasp building. As you are a building professional as I am to the danger was to much for the Education Authority to accep

 

Ihave the same problem from Inverness to Wick, Stornoway to kirkwall Health and Safety are pulling the strings.

 

I went back to CTS Gleedles just before it was flattened and it did bring a lump to my throat to see an institution before destruction.

That school gave me so much

[helbo]

HSPec correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding for the reason to demolish the Gleedles school/site was because of Blue an White Asbestos.

It was a late 60's Clasp building. As you are a building professional as I am to the danger was to much for the Education Authority to accep

 

Ihave the same problem from Inverness to Wick, Stornoway to kirkwall Health and Safety are pulling the strings.

 

I went back to CTS Gleedles just before it was flattened and it did bring a lump to my throat to see an institution before destruction.

That school gave me so much

 

I remember moving in to a brand spanking school at Gleedless and the meat pies at the local 'Tuck Shop'. Returning to an earlier time, I was always fascinated by Herbert's orator skills, especially in his 'Assembly talks' and his occasional 'gramophone sessions'...Alleluia Chorus?

[Passitthen]

The same Doug Dearden who was one of the most cussed minded hookers I ever played with? Fffnar ffnar...

Hi, I swam with Doug ( Dearden) at the City swimming galas -- baths at the top of Prince of Wales road- daunting for me, but for Doug " easy peasy". I swam breast stroke and came about 4th out of 6 I think; the next morning Mr Howell the PE Master said " you werent trying last night", Oh dear.

 

Mate of mine Roy Wilkinson swam back stroke in the same galas.

 

Can any one help me = I had a good friend in CTS, namely Ken Goodall, he was in Telford House and played 1st team CTS football; his mum and dad had a post office in Rotherham. We ere really good mates but drifted away with family life and work. Appreciate any help on finding Ken.

[HPSec]

I remember moving in to a brand spanking school at Gleedless and the meat pies at the local 'Tuck Shop'. Returning to an earlier time, I was always fascinated by Herbert's orator skills, especially in his 'Assembly talks' and his occasional 'gramophone sessions'...Alleluia Chorus?

 

Would that be Sir Henry Coward conducting? I seem to recall that Herbert was a particular fan of his.

[HPSec]

Sam Hedley I had forgotten and I am missing a name in the science set of teachers (chemistry probably) - a young man (older then, but half my age now, I guess). Is that a cue for a song? For some reason Mary Hopkins is singing in my head.

 

I remember that from about 1964 there would be a break in maths homework on a Thursday night to watch Top of the Pops (with the Go-Jos and latterly Pan's People - serious exams looming or not) and the Man from U.N.C.L.E.

 

Talking to myself again! That teacher I'd forgotten - from the chemistry set - was Mr Holford who strikes me now (in the mind's eye) as a quiet but cheery, unassuming, diligent man.

 

I never did Chemistry, and that is a kind of regret. I used to marvel at those bright Chemistry types exchanging chemical formulae (as we tucked into the cheese pie) at the prefects' dining table, which, as I recall, was set aside from the dining room proper and was located perpendicular to the hall doors in the main entrance at Gleadless. Perhaps we were located there pending an insurrection.