Tony Cunnane's Early Years 1935-53

In September 1943 all those in my class at Christ Church 'Little School', about 30 in number, moved to the Big School, St James' Church of England School, close by the LMS railway bridges. Now my walk to and from school was much shorter. Morning and afternoon assemblies always started in the playground, 9.00 am and 1.30 pm prompt. Each of the four forms would line up separately, but boys and girls were segregated at opposite ends of the playground. When we were dressed off to the teachers' satisfaction in straight, silent lines the 1st form would lead off into school, boys turning to the right to go through one entrance, girls turning left to go through the other entrance. There were eroded signs engraved in stone over each door, 'Boys' and 'Girls', so the practice had been obviously been in force for many decades. This procedure ensured that the boys filed past the boys' noisome outside toilets and the girls passed by their outside toilets. At least when we were inside boys and girls sat amongst each other without any segregation. As far as I can recall, we chose whom we wanted to sit next to. I always wanted to be on the front row and made a beeline for a desk there. I was well-placed to get the seat of my choice because the entrance to what was to be our classroom was very close to the boys' door to the outside. A tall and pretty girl called Maureen Hall eventually chose to sit next to me – probably because she also wanted to be on the front row more than her wish to be next to me.

Our teacher in the 1st Form was Miss Thompson and we all quickly began to idolise her. She seemed very old and wise to us but in fact it turns out that she was only about 20 years older than we were. Miss Thompson had been to London and that impressed us no end. “Tell us some stories about London,” we regularly begged and she would usually oblige. London featured in the wireless news every day; we knew that London was where the King and Queen lived; we knew London was the centre of the British Commonwealth, London was our Capital City and London was the most important city in the world! But London was nearly 200 miles away and none of us, and probably none of our parents, had been there so we eagerly soaked up all Miss Thompson’s stories. We learned about the River Thames, Trafalgar Square and Lord Nelson atop his column, Piccadilly Circus, and the Tower of London where enemies had their heads chopped off.

The other teachers seemed to come and go at regular intervals – no doubt due to wartime commitments. All the teachers were women except for the Headmaster. All I can remember about the first Headmaster, Mr Moore, was that he was a great advocate of corporal punishment for boys, strokes of a cane across the palm of the hand, and we lived in fear of him – but that was quite normal for the 1940s. Later he was replaced by Mr Paterson, more of whom later. The female teachers used to slap us, or throw the wooden blackboard duster at us, when we did wrong and we just accepted this as normal practice. We certainly only spoke when we were invited to.

Above:

I took this photograph in 2004. St James' School was on the left. The walls and gate on the right did not exist in the 1940s and that area abutting on the 99 Arches was just more waste ground. The two LMS railways bridges can be seen. The lower bridge at the far end carried the Down Fast line straight into Wakefield Kirkgate's Platform 1, which is less than a mile off to the right. The higher bridge carries the slow lane to Kirkgate, and the slow and fast lines to Horbury Junction about 2 miles off to the left.

Below:

A closer view, also from 2004, of the LMS railway bridges with Avondale Street beyond.