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These photographs were supplied by Mrs Charlotte Wiseman, formerly Charlotte Mills. She entered the Grammar School after leaving the village school in Dullingham at the age of 14. It had then been at Foley House for only a year or so. The school started in about 1920, largely on the initiative of the Rev. C.J.N. Childs, who was the rector of Moulton. It was co-educational from the outset. Lessons were first held in the schoolroom at the Congregational Church in Newmarket High Street (the building was demolished about 1967).
Charlotte entered the school in the autumn term of 1924. There were 88 pupils: 46 boys and 42 girls. All were fee-paying; Charlotte’s father, Walter Mills – licensee of The Boot in Dullingham – used to give her the school fees in an envelope on the first day of each term, and she handed the envelope to the headmaster in his study.
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This group photograph shows Charlotte Mills’s class, with the headmaster and senior mistress in the centre. Charlotte is in the middle row, fourth from the left. Although she says that the rules about uniform were strict, they were stricter in later years: the girls have a variety of gym tunics and collars and wear no ties, while the boys wear different jackets and all manner of ties. Front row extreme left is Ena Mason (later Mrs Marshall) and front row second from right is Janet Edgecombe (Mrs Coe).
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Cookery lessons were held in a large room in a building next to the Conservative Club, perhaps the room that in the 1950s and early 1960s was home to art classes. Each week two pupils had to shop for what the girls were to cook, and also to remember what everything cost so it could be divided up – a frequent cause of confusion. Charlotte is the tall girl fifth from the right, and Miss Dickie is standing at the back of the group, in the middle.
This picture showing Charlotte with her hockey stick reflects what she most enjoyed about school. One of her school reports lamented that she did not put as much energy and work into lessons as she did into sport. Charlotte, 99 in January 2010, now enjoys watching sport on television. She loved her school days; the headmaster was much liked and always ready to listen to problems, and all the staff were approachable to the pupils. On snowy days when pupils battled to school from outlying villages, Miss Wakelin would provide cups of hot soup before the school day began. When her schooldays ended, Charlotte was sorry to say goodbye.
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Charlotte Mills, who has supplied photographs of her school days, has happy memories of her time at the school. She also has a copy of The Foleyan for Summer Term 1924, when she was a pupil. Some of the space in the magazine is taken up with advertising from local firms. These include shops that lasted for many years, most of which have now gone: Hobbs Bros. (who offered a Sparklet Syphon at the reduced price of 6/9); A.N. Lakeman, with their Tea and Dining Rooms and rooms for hire in the High Street; W.J. Moon, selling the All-Steel Raleigh, Swift and Moon bicycles, from 5 guineas each; and Tindall & Son, promoting their lending library. As in later editions, there is a lot of information about sporting events. The reports of Red and Blue House (there were only two houses then) include one paragraph about academic achievement – under Red House, which acknowledges the superiority of Blue House in this respect. Form III, however, reported enthusiasm for academic subjects. Here are some details from the magazine that give a picture of how things were nearly eighty years ago. Here, in the report on Speech Day, we have a glimpse of W.J. Watterson at the end of his first year as headmaster, in the days immediately before the outbreak of the First World War.
It is the opinion of many of the scholars to-day that Mowl was the best ‘all round’ sportsman the school has ever known. He was first and foremost an expert runner, and won many prizes at the School Sports, and also in the neighbouring villages. He played outside-right for the School’s 1st XI football team with skill, and was the cause of many goals scored by the XI. At Cricket he was good both at bowling and batting, and was one of the best of captains.
English grammar has gone down fairly well, while Composition and Scripture are esteemed as ideal favourites. Mathematics and Science although appearing to be rather rocky have been covered nicely. We have missed our essayist and artist A.G.B. and our Mathematician H.E.R. … Going back to work, our woodwork goes steadily on, and is liked by our boy carpenters.
On the 23rd May, the School met in the assembly room. Remarks were made on the vastness of our Empire, telling how it was obtained by sacrifice and wounds, intermingled with the tears of those at home. The singing of the National Anthem brought a happy and grateful meeting to a close.
This term the third-form girls have the honour of holding the Girl’s Junior School Drill badge, which they have gained for getting more points for drill than the first and second forms.
The general opinion of a Master or Mistress when taking Form II is that it is a very restless form. Perhaps this is excusable when it is taken into consideration that the majority of the pupils have attended Elementary Schools and may not be used to such strict discipline.
History is improving in our Form. We know now that the Stone Age was not built by the Ancient Britons.
Onward, Form I, may we press
Through the paths of thought,
Work is for us true happiness,
But not so much as sport.
Our minds are not of celestial birth,
But thus we make them so on earth.
H.A.H.
Our second prize distribution took place at the Memorial Hall on June 19th.
The Headmaster, in presenting his report … felt that there was satisfaction in the growth of the School, although naturally, it increased slowly. The present number of pupils was 88, of which 52 came from Newmarket, but those who came from the surrounding district were usually able to hold their own with the town pupils as regarded regular attendance and progress. The report of the inspection which took place last year was quite satisfactory, which was a fitting reward to his predecessor’s patient work. The senior members of the School were to sit for the Cambridge School Certificate Examination in July, and the School was recognized as an approved centre for it. An excellent cycle shed and an up-to-date chemical laboratory were two great improvements to the school.
The old Students’ Society (irreverently called the ‘osses’ by unfeeling and illiterate persons who can read nothing but initials) was formed in July 1923 at the suggestion of the late Headmaster, Rev. C.J.N. Child, M.A. At that time it was decided to hold three meetings a year, which should take the form of social evenings. To aid in keeping touch between the School and old Students, the girls and boys of the top form of the School are included as members of the Society.
It was the war that brought Ian Mackinson to the Newmarket area and to the Grammar School. His family was bombed out in London in 1940, and he came to live with his grandmother, Granny Scrivener, in Moulton.
He recalls few other evacuees from blitzed cities being transferred to the school. There was Jean Tarlton, who was in his class – she became Jean Orbell after she married his friend Jim Orbell, and later Jean Smith. There was a memorable boy called Meyer in his class who was a Jewish refugee from Germany. He was quiet and very clever. Arthur Orbell recalled that Meyer became bar mitzvah, and thereafter wore a ring that showed he had attained this rite of passage. Wearing a ring was not permitted under the school rules, and he had the choice of taking it off or leaving. He chose to leave.
Ian had no difficulty in being assimilated as a kind of foreigner himself. He felt quite close to the staff – to some extent getting from them the warmth and affection that most other pupils received from their parents each day. His father and mother used to come to see him about once a month, but his family broke up after the bombing and never really came together again. He considers that had something to do with the admiration and respect that he had for the head, Mr Watterson.
On the human side, old boys and girls left, some joined the forces, and some of those were killed. Others lost their fathers and brothers in action. A German air raid on Newmarket on 18 February 1941, devastating the High Street just yards from the school, killed 27 civilians and injured 248. Although he was in school that afternoon, Ian can’t recall the event, but he was aware that a stray bomb could easily have hit the school – had the Dornier been only a little higher, that probably would have happened. Ruby Grant, to whom the experience was less familiar, does remember it. Whenever there was a risk of an air raid, her form used to crouch down in the cloakroom or under the iron stairs. Everyone was taking cover on the day when the bombs were dropped along the High Street.
Watty had some excellent teachers to support him throughout the hostilities. The male teachers had either come out of retirement or were very experienced and therefore not called up for military service. Notable among those who came out of retirement was Old Gosser, Mr G. Osborne, who returned to teach maths. He appears in school photographs taken twenty years earlier. Ruby had fond memories of him; maths was a favourite subject for her, and he was one of her favourite teachers.
Shortages had their impact on non-academic subjects as well as academic ones. Margaret Paxman made buns one day in her cookery class, held in the Technical Institute near the Clock Tower. This batch was of a strange green hue as the buns were made with greengage jam instead of sugar (which was in very short supply). She was waylaid by boys from her form as she tried to ride through the gates of Foley House, and was relieved of her efforts. When she reached home, her mother was perplexed at what had happened to the tea-time treat.
Food is a recurring topic in people’s reminiscences, and school dinners are remembered with notable clarity. Those in the 1950s and 1960s who regarded their meals as unpalatable would perhaps have taken a different view if they had experienced the wartime ones. In the 1940s the British Restaurant in Fitzroy Street was used for school dinners. It later became the King’s Theatre, following endowment by Captain King to fit it out. Joyce Scarse remembers only three dishes on the menu: mince, stewed steak (both of which were incredibly tough and greasy) and corned beef, the dish of choice because it was easier to cut out the grisly bits. Contemporaries whom she has consulted cannot remember any other dishes in their early days at the school. Later additions were whale meat and snoek – neither of which was enjoyed.
Running a school during the war years was particularly difficult, especially as practically every physical resource needed was in short supply or not obtainable. The scarcity of school equipment was a constant problem, and teachers would bemoan the fact and talk about what they could have done if they had all the facilities they needed. It was a difficult learning situation, but the academic results seemed not to reflect the domestic disturbances. The staff were not deflected from making the best of things, and the headmaster came down mighty heavily on anyone denting the school’s reputation. For one reason or another – such as exam results, achievements mentioned in the local press, names of old boys on the Roll of Honour, and the close attention of Captain King of the school governors – Ian felt considerable pride in being a grammar school boy.
Contributions from:
Ruby Grant (Hunt) (1937–42)
Ian Mackinson (1940–5)
Margaret Paxman (Wheeldon) (1942–7)
Joyce Scarse (1945–50)
Miss Helen Blankley, commonly known as Hannah, taught maths for many years. She retired in the early 1960s. In school photographs she is almost unchanging over all that time: a tall, academic-looking figure with neatly waved short hair and serious-looking spectacles that added a final touch to her image. Like all the staff who had degrees at that time, she wore an academic gown both in assembly and in lessons, invariably over formal coats and skirts in winter and limp summer dresses when it was warmer. Her arrival in a small black car was something of a surprise at a time when most women did not drive.
Hannah’s status as senior mistress earned her the dignity of having her own little empire. This was the wooden hut that stood behind the first-form building at Foley House. In winter it was a cosy sanctum with its own Tortoise stove sending out waves of heat in the confined space. Often there was a large heap of unclaimed sports equipment at one end. She had pastoral responsibility for the girls, and it was to her that they went with their embarrassed requests to be excused swimming.
Those at school in the 1940s remember Hannah well. Joyce Scarse recalls one particular lesson in which Miss Blankley endeavoured to explain angles. She announced that they were to regard the surface of a desk as the sea, and the piece of chalk she placed on it as ‘a boat out to sea’. They were then enjoined to ‘imagine me as a cliff face’. You needed to hear this with her distinctive accent (featuring a long vowel sound in the first syllable of ‘elastic’ and ‘plastic’) to get the full effect. They didn’t have any difficulty in imagining the tall, flat figure as a cliff and reacted with fits of giggles.
Gerald Pope remembers a lesson that had a less happy outcome. He was 13 years old. The lesson was maths and the teacher was inevitably Miss Blankley. The class of IVB had been set a problem (details of which escape his memory) that he found somewhat difficult. During the build-up to the exercise there had been a certain amount of banter among some male pupils, which had perhaps been a childish attempt to wind up the teacher. It would appear that their efforts had been successful, as he was soon to realise. The boy seated in front of him seemed to have completed the task, so Gerald leaned forwards to try to glean some information from his exercise book. The boy sitting behind obviously thought this unfair and consequently prodded Gerald with the sharp end of his pair of compasses. His shriek of pain, and the reaction of Miss Blankley, resulted in the pair having to go immediately to the headmaster’s study.
Miss Blankley was a really good friend for those who had no parents, like Sheila Ross. When Sheila first attended Newmarket Grammar School, she was given a school bicycle in order to get there, and she had to learn to ride it. It took some time. Shelia reports:
Miss Blankley was so kind and understanding when I used to arrive at school with bleeding knees caused by falling off. She always seemed to have soothing cream and bandages. In winter I would often arrive with hands and legs that were split and bleeding by frost and snow, and she would always dispense the necessary first aid from her cosy little hut. She did try to persuade the woman with whom I was forced to live to buy me gloves and long stockings, but I only ever had two pairs of white ankle socks. A kind lady in the village where I lived gave me a scarf, and Miss Blankley found a ‘spare’ pair of gloves.
She was so understanding in all personal matters, and she was also the best maths teacher you could have – so good at explaining things and offering many good short ways of calculating and checking things. You could not help but learn. She also had a very dry sense of humour, and was very fair.
She was my inspiration for wanting to work with figures and finance.
Kind she certainly was, but she was also a stickler for enforcing the rules, and especially concerned that the girls should behave like young ladies.
Joyce Scarse reports that eating in the street was strictly forbidden. After the war ice cream was in short supply, apart from Dolf’s watery variety, which wasn’t popular. One day a shop in the High Street was reported to have some – those little round twopenny ones (in old money) that fitted into a cornet. Unfortunately a kindly governor who spotted a group enjoying them reported appropriately to Miss Blankley, who was outraged that they were not only eating in the street while wearing school uniform, ‘but licking them at that’.
Propriety was always a major concern of hers. Pamela Singleton was once playing tennis on the school grass court at Foley House. All her exams had been completed, and she was about to leave the school. Miss Blankley suddenly stopped the game and asked Pamela to speak to her. She was given reluctant permission to complete the game then in progress, and then duly reported to the hut. She found Miss Blankley was very concerned because Pamela was wearing a near knee-length tennis skirt, and the overknickers that were part of the highly respectable outfit showed if she moved briskly so that her skirt flew out. Miss Blankley insisted that she must wear shorts on the school court in any future games.
In the late 1950s the school had grown and many of the pupils were never taught by Miss Blankley. They saw most of her when she supervised the crocodile of girls that set out for school dinners at the library in Fitzroy Street. When everyone was in line with her pair, she would give them the go ahead: ‘Right you are, Jocelyn’, ‘Right you are, Anne.’ It never varied, except for the name.
Contributions from:
Joyce Scarse (1945–50)
Gerald Pope (1946–52)
Sheila Ross (Austin) (1948–53)
Pamela Singleton (Kesteven) (1951–8)
Those who lived nearby and went home for a meal at midday missed a major aspect of school life: school dinners. Many of those who experienced them have something to say, most expressing general disgust rather than going into detail. A few have revealed more about their experiences.
In the 1940s the British Restaurant in Fitzroy Street, one of the establishments set up by the government to provide a meal for those who had run out of food coupons, was the venue for school dinners. From the early days of the war only three dishes on the menu are remembered: mince, stewed steak (both incredibly tough and greasy) and corned beef. The last of these was the favourite for Joyce Scarse and her contemporaries because you could cut out the gristly bits easily. Later additions to the range on offer were whale meat and snoek – neither of which was any improvement. Lumpy semolina and custard comprised the second course. Cabbage was common, and always well stewed. The British Restaurant operated in the former St Mary’s boys’ school, which by then had been replaced by Houldsworth Valley Primary School. After the war, following generous endowment by Captain King (for many years chairman of the school governors), it was transformed into the King’s Theatre.
Those who arrived at the school at the end of the war – Brian Layt among them – had their dinners at the newly built Secondary Modern School, where the meals were cooked. Meals must have been better in those circumstances – no negative comments have been received. A long crocodile proceeded there every day under strict supervision from a staff member and prefects.
The school dinners from the mid-1950s were unforgettable. Things had changed, but there was still no canteen on site with comfortable tables and chairs. At least the walk was shorter. Everyone had to don hats (or caps) and coats and walk in a crocodile through St Mary’s churchyard and up Fitzroy Street to the old St Mary’s girls’ school, companion to the boys’ school that had also changed its role over the years. Space was limited, and girls went first one week, boys first the next. The building housed not only the school canteen (furnished with large folding tables and benches that seated four on each side) but also the town library.
The food could be smelt on entering the building (it was delivered in metal containers from the Secondary Modern School’s kitchen). It was never easy to guess what was on the menu as the aroma always seemed to be that of very old boiled cabbage.
There was no choice for those in the lower forms, not even eat it or leave it. For what we were about to receive we were required to be truly thankful – grace was always said on behalf of all by the duty teacher. Mr Walters had a snappy one in Latin that was quickly out of the way. Mr Gosling’s contribution was from Robert Burns and was delivered in broad Lowland Scots: ‘Some hae meat and canna eat, and some wad eat that want it. But we hae meat and we can eat, and sae the Lord be thankit.’ Most of the rest simply uttered the well-known words of ‘For what we are about to receive’.
Chips were never on the menu. Potato came in the boiled form (often with interesting black lumps in it), except in seasons of shortage when sticky boiled rice was offered instead. Sometimes swede was mashed with the potato, a great improvement as far as appearance was concerned. The potato was the most consistently nourishing part of the meal.
The main dish would be grey stew; steak-and-kidney pie with grey crust; shepherd’s pie; pilchard salad with limp lettuce and a wedge of tomato, heavily coloured with beetroot (this was probably the most nutritious main course, especially when enhanced by the odd bright green caterpillar), or the luncheon meat variation of salad; sausages (sometimes beef, which a few confessed, somewhat shamefaced, to enjoying); salt beef; unidentifiable forms of fish (on one memorable occasion complete with a worm) and a few others that have faded mercifully from memory. Generous helpings from the large container of gravy could be refused (and often were). Salad cream and piccalilli were sometimes on offer at the one end, where everyone queued for each course, table by table. Liberal amounts of salt and pepper from the pots on every table were always taken. There were jugs of water and glasses too, and a great deal of water was spilt every time.
Once a year there was Christmas dinner: pork with stuffing and sprouts and, sometimes, roast potatoes. The cooks tried hard but the last named were soggy – like the Brussels sprouts – after their journey in large containers across Newmarket.
A favourite dessert with most diners was chocolate crunch, which needed careful handling as it had a tendency to shoot all over the room if attacked carelessly. It was usually accompanied by a pink sauce known universally as Windolene – it had a pleasant taste, but was best avoided if you were not confident about your spoon control. There was also a grey sponge pudding with interesting properties. Those with a bent towards physics could hit it with a spoon and watch it collapse into a flat blodge. Puddings, however, were much better than the main course. There was sometimes a sticky pudding made of Rice Krispies and syrup that was so popular that second helpings were sometimes taken, and the treacle tart was also welcomed. The custard was not usually considered an enhancement, though. Jelly and blancmange stood up to transportation and were well received.
As the pupils progressed up the school, the supervision of meals became more lax. Provided you went up to collect a meal and took a plate, you could get away with refusing what was on offer – sometimes even the whole course. If you didn’t have it, you could not be made to finish it, of course. Parents, to many of whom the cost of the meal was a significant matter, were seldom told that this happened and that their children sometimes ate nothing throughout the whole school day.
Susan Wood had a huge advantage: her mother worked in the building as a part-time librarian. On Mondays she was there in the morning, and every Monday a paper bag would appear in one of the cupboards in the cloakroom where hats and coats were left. Sometimes it contained two sausage rolls, sometimes doughnuts or peculiar green sponge cakes covered in chocolate and topped by a roll of marzipan – all purveyed by the Scotch Tea Rooms. These were gleefully taken away and eaten by Susan and her friend Jenny Martin. These treats helped them avoid hunger on many occasions when they managed to avoid the worst of the set menu.
In 1959 Christabel Martin was about to leave school and underwent two weeks’ work experience in the kitchens at the Secondary Modern School before starting a catering course at Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology. She reported that the quality of ingredients that went into the school kitchen was high. They were delivered by the town’s best butchers and grocers. What came out certainly was not. The food was badly prepared: tough bits were left in the meat, and of course black bits remained in the potatoes. The cooks had the best of intentions, but appeared to lack knowledge of what to do. They started with the easy things to get them out of the way. The cabbage was the first thing to be put on to boil, when the staff arrived at 9 a.m. It explained a great deal.
Contributions from:
Brian Layt (1945–51)
Christabel Martin (Cary) (1955–59)
Jenny Martin (Knight) (1956–63)
Joyce Scarse (1945–50)
Susan Wood (Stanford) (1956–61)
Your memories of your time at school are needed to build up our archive. Our concern is to build up a record of the school which will be both a reference for former pupils and their families and part of the social history of the town of Newmarket and its neighbourhood. It does not matter if you cannot supply full names or precise dates for what you remember. It is more important to convey the atmosphere of being at Newmarket Grammar School than to give exact detail.
Any anecdotes you have about your time at school would be welcome. If you lack ideas, a list of themes that are of interest follows. You may be able to draw on what you have heard from older relatives or friends; if so, please give their names and dates of attendance.