Central Technical School

[gmarshman]

Its amazing how pupils perceived their teachers. I found Ken Westnedge a fair teacher with common sense , sadly lacking in some teachers who were on the verge of sadistic.

The teachers who I experienced as fair and with common sense I met after leaving school and they confirmed my beliefs . They also were not very cordial towards some of their colleagues who were less than fair and hyper in their teaching habits, which confirmed my suspicions.

 

---------- Post added 29-02-2016 at 11:49 ----------

 

Just to clarify my statement on how I perceived the CTS teachers, I do not classify Mr.Bunn as less than fair. A case with me of mistaken culprit to a misdemeanor.

I would not want to name the CTS masters who were bordering on sadistic behaviour. Am sure past pupils of the school would know who I was referring.

[helbo]

Its amazing how pupils perceived their teachers. I found Ken Westnedge a fair teacher with common sense , sadly lacking in some teachers who were on the verge of sadistic.

The teachers who I experienced as fair and with common sense I met after leaving school and they confirmed my beliefs . They also were not very cordial towards some of their colleagues who were less than fair and hyper in their teaching habits, which confirmed my suspicions.

 

---------- Post added 29-02-2016 at 11:49 ----------

 

Just to clarify my statement on how I perceived the CTS teachers, I do not classify Mr.Bunn as less than fair. A case with me of mistaken culprit to a misdemeanor.

I would not want to name the CTS masters who were bordering on sadistic behaviour. Am sure past pupils of the school would know who I was referring.

 

---------- Post added 03-05-2016 at 18:59 ----------

 

I can name names....BAINES for one! This sadist, employed as a teacher, almost ripped my hair out from the roots, because I simply didn't understand a workshop procedure. Today, this kind of physical abuse, would result in a sacking or prosecution. For those that were oblivious to this "discipline" you most likely had the right face, name or social background. There were numerous, similar instances, that I know of and I hope that they, like myself, did well for themselves, after they had entered a level playing field. Mine was Australia!

Edited May 3, 2016 by helbo

[Janner]

During my time at the Tech. (46-49) I cannot recall any bad or cruel treatment whatsoever.

[Derek Bulmer]

If I remember correctly, '3B' (Engineering), was my last class at the CTS (1965). Then on to the ESC as a 'Trainee Technician' ($2 9s 2d a week). Does anyone remember a 'very mature' lad of that year by the name 'Des Bulmer'? His dad had a pub down Darnall, and sometimes he'd bring in a bottle of Guiness to have instead of morning milk.

 

 

That sounds like me.

 

Derrick Bulmer, My father had the Kings Head in Darnall.

 

He never missed the bottles of Guiness as he had crate loads of them.

 

LOL

 

---------- Post added 28-05-2016 at 21:55 ----------

 

I knew a Szpigniew Subucki and a Michael Fletcher (62-65). I think they were in 'Building', I was with the 'other mob' Does anyone remember: Paul Bailey, Gordon Carlisle, Richard Stojak and 'tough guy', Desmond Bulmer?

 

Mines a Guiness LOL

[joe soap]

CTS from September 66 to July 1970. I was in the same year as the first influx of girls from Hurlfield- Susan Benson, Rhona Baker, Renata Sorella, Susan White, Elaine Elsdon, Gwen Foster, Gillian Teanby, Stephanie Crawshaw. Apologies if I have forgotten any other ladies.

[JWCosgrove]

Can anybody help?

 

I'm an old boy of the CTS (1960-5) and would like to joint the Old Boy's Association if it still exists. I am also trying to locate old School pals - particularly Mike Flynn who I lost contact with many years ago.

 

Any help would be appreciated and news from any classmates most welcome. Best wishes. John Cosgrove

[TimeBandit52]

Anyone remember my brother Mick Downing who attended late 50s early 60s.

[John Heeley]

I am John Heeley, and I was at the Central Technical School for five years, leaving in the summer of 1969. There was too much corporal punishment and silly rules at the place, but latterly I had three wonderful teachers (Knight, Hill and King) and left with 3 A levels (two at grade A). Career-wise, I never looked back from that point onwards, and for that reason feel most grateful to the Tec.

 

My hazy school-day memories have been jogged by reading the threads. Names like Chris Pryor and Nobby Clark have suddenly come back to me, while the posts by David Theaker really do resonate! I remember you well, David, and it would be good to hear from you and any other long-lost friends who can remember me!

 

P.S.On leaving school in the summer of '69, I worked for 6 weeks at a Butlins Holiday Camp with my Central Tec matey, Richard Ellin - anybody know what happened to him?

 

---------- Post added 17-11-2016 at 13:48 ----------

 

Hi Dave, remember me, Chris Pryor, we were in the same class, I seem to recall you lived in Woodhouse off Station Rd

 

Hi Chris, remember me, John Heeley. Unsure we were in the same class, but I seem to recall you were a Wisewood lad.

 

It looks like you are now living in Lodge Moor. I am just down the road!

 

I see 2 old Tec mates for a drink at Christmas - Alan Curtis and Dave Salt. Let me know if you want to join us.

 

Best, John

 

---------- Post added 17-11-2016 at 14:05 ----------

 

Hi Oldm,

I was there from 64 to 68 we moved from the town centre to Gleedless and I remember most of my time there. We used to go to the Punch Bowl pub to have a fag and of course we had Hurfield girls at the side my first love I met over the fence while we were playing rugby. Those were the days, but Pop Gregory caught ut at the punch Bowl smoking and I remember I had a pack of 10 Gold leaf, he made me smoke the rest in the school playing fields where I was sick. Then I got 3 strokes of his cane.

 

My name is Dave Theaker the ones I remember are Steve Nicholson, Brian Chapman and many more.

Very fond memories

 

Dave

 

Hi Dave,

 

Maybe you remember me - John Heeley? I think we may have shared a route through 2 schools - Wisewood and Central Technical. I remember you well. In one of your posts you also mention K.Harrison - well, she was the focus of my first real 'crush', though you are the first person to whom I have ever owned up!

 

The education I received at the Tec set me up for life and a career which is still rumbling on.

 

I get up to Scotland quite a lot, so who knows we may meet up again after all these years.

 

All the best, John

 

---------- Post added 17-11-2016 at 14:28 ----------

 

Was there 63-66 & avoided him like the plague. Certainly he had a horrific persona. I did not like Mr Howell (Sportsmaster - He was a B*&S?£&d !). Survived & so happy on last day. Spent 1.5 years at Gleadless (Wadge retired during that time & replaced by Peter Dixon - he was ok) - I was luckier than you (I think!). Take care.

 

Yes, Wadge was 'old school' and unforgivably sadistic. I recall shortly after the move to Ashleigh, the whole school was abruptly summoned to witness some poor boy being ritually humiliated by Wadge for prising a small marker disc off a chair. He sobbed abjectly as he was caned ferociously by a seemingly incensed Wadge. to this day I cannot say whether or not the man's anger was theatrical or genuine, all I do know is that this awful spectacle is stamped indelibly on my mind.

 

---------- Post added 17-11-2016 at 15:01 ----------

 

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.

 

My recollections of Charles Haydock are less favourable. He rapped the knuckles of girls for the most trivial of matters; he slung blackboards at pupils; and it was nigh on impossible to judge what his mood would be. His 'jokes' were puerile. He caned me twice, on separate occasions, for spelling mistakes. On the first occasion my hand was so sore and swollen I could not hold my knife properly at tea later on that night, though thankfully Mum and Dad did not spot anything untoward.

 

I hated him so much that on my last day a fellow-sufferer (Keith Dungworth) and I stole his legendary cane and burned it on a bit of wasteland near the school. That little act of rebellio felt mighty good!

 

---------- Post added 17-11-2016 at 15:12 ----------

 

I was at CTS 1962 to 1965 and I detested every single day. The day that I left was without doubt the greatest day of my life, even better than getting married or the birth of my children.

 

The staff were only interested in making you 'ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL'. Your education was of secondary importance to making you conform to their very narrowly defined dress code. I was actually sent home one day for wearing trousers that were an inch too narrow at the bottoms.

 

As for that evil man Herbert Wadge, all I can say is that the world is a far better place for his no longer being with us.

 

What finished it all for me was the day at Gleadless Road when I refused to be caned by Thornton the science teacher for something for which I wasn't responsible. Having been sent to see Wadge I was told by him to apologise to the teacher which I refused to do. The colour of his face lives with me to this day. He went purple with rage but I stood my ground and was sent home with a message for my mother to be at the school next morning.

 

That was probably the biggest mistake that old Herbert ever made. My mother gave him a right old rollocking and at a volume that I was assured could, quite literally, be heard all over the school. Herbert suffered a severe dent in the credibility stakes that day and I believe that he retired shortly afterwards. Good riddance! I never went back and was given early release by the Education Committee in February 1965.

 

I would love to know what became of my two best mates from the time that I was there. One was Derek Poole who lived in the Pitsmoor area and always wanted to join the Fire Brigade. He was affectionately known as Fred because of his striking resemblance to Fred Flintstone. The other was William (Billy) Harling who lived on Gleadless Road near the Carlton Club and was my best mate from our days at Hurlfield Boys School.

 

New to this thread, but I was at CTS 1963-70 and had a few years of Wadge and all of his rantings and ravings, so I just love this story!

 

---------- Post added 17-11-2016 at 16:18 ----------

 

Further to my last post, four of the class of 1969 (myself included) are meeting up for a drink in Sheffield shortly after Christmas Day. Let me know if that is of any interest to other reprobates from the class of '69 who might be out there and more or less alive and kicking!

[Dave_01]

Further to the above message for an informal get together after Xmas. Details are as follows. Date and time: Tues 27th Dec, about 1pm. Location: The Kelham Island pub. My name is Dave Salt and I was at CTS 64-69. There should be at least 4 ex-CTS there so just turn up and make yourself known by asking for myself of John Heeley. We met up same time last year for a first re-union after donkeys years and had a good laugh

[bertiemarsde]

CT Jan 51-Dec52 head Wadge Evil man,

Parkin Plumbing very pleasant good teacher

Dove gentleman French teacher.

Palfreyman OK.

Mainwaring Bully

 

In my class Harry Churchyard good at maths.

Gabby Haines full of fun, my mate

Lomax

Lowe is dad owned a painting decorating business

 

The City Grammar School music room overlooked our play yard. The girls would flash their legs at us mere mortals some of us probably died on the spot.

I am Albert Marsden born 28/4/1938 started in 3x then 5y then off to join the Royal Navy as an Artificer Apprentice at H.M.S. FISGARD, TORPOINT Cornwall. Now living in Torquay Devon I play saxophone and Clarinet and am an old Yorkshireman and proud of it. Merry Xmas to y'all