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Life in the 1950's was wonderful for young Martin Skeffington.
Time as a child was spent either at school or playing, being taken to the seaside or other excursions. I was lucky having an aunt and uncle who were prepared to take me on various trips. School began in Mrs. Statham's class at the Bottom School, a Church of England School situated in Wood Street. It is now the site of the Low Cost Supermarket. This held many adventures for me but one of my first experiences was being in trouble for urinating in the drain in the middle of the playground. Encouraged by others and not knowing where the school toilets were at that time I did what I thought was the natural thing to do. I seem to recollect being brought before the headmistress and being given a stern telling off not do repeat.
I went through the school finishing in Mrs. Deacon's class. I do not remember the names of the other teachers. They were happy days and in summer we were allowed into a grassed area at the rear of the school. It was there that John Abbott one of my contemporaries introduced me to a rather large red insect, which he was convinced was a bloodsucker, and subsequently tried to convince others of its nasty properties.
After a chequered life, John finally became a convert to Roman Catholicism and joined the priesthood. Later I moved from the Bottom School to the Top School, which was located in High Street and further from home. This meant that I could leave school earlier and travel home on the Elmesthorpe bus. This was the bus that collected children from Elmesthorpe the neighbouring village. The journey home was always a risky business as you never knew where the bus would put you down. Regular drivers knew to put you down in the vicinity of your home but sometimes they would carry on past and you would find yourself alighting at the cross roads in Elmesthorpe with the subsequent walk back.
The early school buses were relics from the 1930's and still had the bell pull to warn the driver you wanted to get off. The bell pull did not always work and you had to make your way to the front of the bus to tell the driver/conductor that you wanted to alight.
Top school was another adventure. Initially I was put into Miss Davis's class. She was an elderly teacher who believed in strict discipline. She objected to my style of writing shown to me by my mother and humiliated me before the class. She further embarrassed me when anxious to get home, and seeing me fiddling with my balaclava she hooked it with the end of her cane and sent it flying through the open window into the girl's playground.
It was a time when boys and girls played separately. It was with some relief that I saw her being presented with her retirement present, the 'obligatory' clock and later seeing her waiting for the black and white bus in The Hollow to whisk her away, never to be seen again.
I was in Miss Sidey's class when King George VI died and we were all sent home as a mark of respect. This caused problems, especially for those children whose parents were both at work. Later in Mrs. Duncan's class it was Coronation Year and we were all presented with a coronation mug complete with picture of Elizabeth II.
I progressed through Mr. Wild's class - his speciality was slapping the thigh, an area that stung but left no lasting effect. It was during a year in his class that we had once a week Mrs. Saddington and her book 'Manners Makest Man'. Finally I ended up in Mrs. Crawford's class after having spent some time in Mr. Sidwell's class using, I remember, blunt scissors that often created jagged edges, which Mr. Sidwell made sure we knew he did not like.
My final year at the Junior School was spent as Register Monitor, every Friday afternoon collecting registers from all the teachers to take to Mrs. Clow the headmistress. This I regarded as a privilege but it also got me out of part of the art lesson and particularly the clearing up afterwards. It was also the year of the 11+ examination, which I failed having later to take an oral test to see if I was acceptable for a grammar school education.
The oral was taken at Hinckley Grammar School, Butt Lane premises. I was one of the first to be interviewed and obviously I was successful as I was accepted for a grammar school place. I remember being told at school and then being allowed home to tell my parents. In my case that meant a visit to Nichols and Wileman's factory where my mother was employed as a linker i.e. she linked the toes of stockings.
To the rear of Clodagh was open countryside. Clodagh had a big garden with large lawns, a fishpond and a large vegetable plot on which was built a greenhouse. There were various fruit bushes: gooseberries, black currants and raspberries, the canes for which stretched across the bottom of the garden. There was also a large cooking apple tree and a pear tree. We were never short of vegetables etc.
From the garden there was a small green gate that gave entry into a field known to us as The Brickyard, basically because some time in its past clay had been extracted to make bricks. By the time I was a child, the field had become, apart from a reasonably large grassed area, overgrown with brambles, hawthorns and other wild plants. There were at least two or three ponds and an area of marshy land under which, if you were lucky, you could feel through your boots the old wooden rails used by the brickyard owners.
To us it was like a large adventure playground. The ponds froze over in winter and in the summer there were numerous places to make dens etc. Wild life was prolific. The field was visited by snipe, woodpeckers and numerous other birds. There were newts in the ponds and lots of other interesting pond life. We could find violets, wild mint, ladysmocks, water crowfoot, bullrushes and other wild flowers. In the next field was a brook where we could find fresh water shrimps and, further down stream, sticklebacks.
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