Childhood Memories of Trumpington 5

Brian Goodliffe

This is the second part of a series of childhood memories of Trumpington in the 1940s and 1950s. For an introduction to the series, see Childhood Memories of Trumpington .

I’d never thought about it until now, but I could well have been the last pupil ever to be enrolled at the old Church School, now the Church Hall, at the junction of Church and Maris Lanes. Eric Youngs was the Headmaster, and he lived in the adjacent School House with his wife Winifred, son Michael and daughter Elizabeth. Elizabeth was about the same age as me and we often played together as children. It was on their tiny television screen that I watched the Queen’s Coronation on that rainy day in June ’53.

As pre-pubescent boys and girls have a very strong reluctance to kissing each other, I can only assume that we were goaded on by our respective mothers, to leave me with vague memories of a clumsy childhood kiss whilst hiding behind our kitchen door. When we eventually moved away our respective parents kept in touch via Christmas cards, until years later, in my mid-twenties, we met again at her mother’s funeral. We picked up where we’d left off on that first innocent kiss, and had a brief love affair for a few weeks; but Elizabeth worked unsociable hours at what was then The University Arms Hotel in Cambridge. By that time I was living some distance away near Letchworth; and somehow we drifted apart again, this time for ever. Probably much to my mother’s disappointment. Although funnily enough, my eventual wife turned out to be the daughter of a Head-of-Department in Higher Education, so at least I did my best to stay on track for her.

I wasn’t at the old Church School long before it was closed in 1950, and those of us from the historic end of Trumpington had to cross what we thought was a busy road then, to get to the big new Fawcett School at the bottom of Alpha Terrace. Now to be honest, I didn’t like Fawcett School.

Continue with the next part of Brian Goodliffe’s childhood memories of Trumpington in the 1940s and 1950s.

Being now further from home, I had to partake of school dinners. I found that you were allowed to leave some of your lumpy mashed potato if you didn’t want it all. So I’d make a little heap on my plate of the food I didn’t like, and with skills worthy of a master-plasterer I’d coat it with a layer of mashed potato. But there was one food that I loved, whereas most of the others didn’t: stewed prunes. On one particular occasion I ate my allotted portion of six or seven, leaving the sucked-clean stones on the rim of the dish. I then relieved the rest of my table of their unwanted prunes, again placing the stones on the rim of my dish. When one of the lunch-time supervisors passed by, she happened upon my proud collection of probably forty-plus prune stones.

I found myself being swiftly escorted to the Headmistress’s office. Whilst en route my mind was busily trying to work out what actual misdemeanour I was guilty of, and, more worryingly, what the appropriate punishment was likely to be. Corporal punishment was still de rigour, even in an infants’ school. But instead of being reprimanded, I was actually given the afternoon off school, and was told to go straight home “And hurry!” But I wasn’t given a specific reason for the concession, nor why urgency was of the essence. Strangely enough though, they had no ill affect on me whatsoever. But the incident became part of our family lore, and the story was retold whenever prunes raised their ugly wrinkled heads.

In the September of my seventh year, as we went back to school after the long summer holidays, I found myself transferred to the adjacent Junior School. I only have three real recollections of my time there, none of them particularly pleasant.

Miss Cross was possibly my first teacher in the Junior School. Cross by name – cross by nature! Hitting children was still positively encouraged in those days, and when you’re little, sitting at your desk, the back of your head is nearest the teacher’s hand level, so that is where most of the blows would land.

Another thing I remember about my time at Fawcett Junior School is the fact that that was where bullying started to blight my life; and it continued to do so for well over a decade, even following me into my electrical apprenticeship.

During my first year as a junior I also had my first ever experience of dentists, initially at school and then at the dental service in Cambridge.

The former Church School from Grantchester Road, August 2008
The former Church School from Grantchester Road, August 2008

The former Church School (later the Church Hall) from Grantchester Road. Photo: Andrew Roberts, August 2008.

Entrance to Fawcett Primary School. Photo: Andrew Roberts, August 2008

Left: Brian Goodliffe, aged about 3, whilst living at Swan’s Yard, Trumpington, in 1947. Right: Brian Goodliffe, wearing a toy policeman’s helmet, on a fairy cycle, July 1950. Photos: Goodliffe family.

Entrance to Fawcett Primary School, August 2008
Entrance to Fawcett Primary School, August 2008
Brian Goodleffe, July 1950
Brian Goodleffe, July 1950
Brian Goodliffe, aged about 3, 1947
Brian Goodliffe, aged about 3, 1947