Tony Cunnane's Early Years 1935-53

Most of the children stayed in school for dinner. In the main these were children whose mothers were out working. The National Government had introduced the school dinners scheme in 1940. They were intended to provide a third of all a child’s protein and calorie requirements. I remember the dinners used to cost four old pence each, that is less than 2p in today’s currency but the poorer children used to get their meals free. Collecting dinner money was the first activity on Monday mornings and it always seemed to take ages. The dinners consisted of a single course delivered to the school mid-morning in large cylindrical containers from a central cookhouse somewhere in Wakefield. The teachers had to do the dishing out. I seem to recall the food almost invariably consisted of thick vegetable soup with lots of potatoes and suet dumplings. It smelled quite appetising but a lingering, increasingly stale, smell remained throughout the school for the rest of the day.

I never stayed at school for dinner because I could walk home in less than 10 minutes and Mum was always there with something hot ready.

I did not realise it at the time but the LMS railway formed an artificial barrier between two territories: the very poor folk in the narrow back-to-back terraces flanking Thornes Lane behind the camera and the slightly better off who lived in Avondale Street and others at the far side.

This is a current view of the unmade lane joining Thornes Lane, behind the camera, to Avondale Street. I first passed along here exactly 66 years before I took this photograph in August 2009.