MY SCHOOL- I started school when I was five years of age in February 1911 and it was usual in those days to start school on your fifth birthday and finish on your fourteenth birthday.

The school I attended was known as the Chilworth and Baddesley School, and was situated in Baddesley. It was a ‘T’ shaped brick building with the School Masters house close by. It was divided into three parts with a curtain separating the long part of the building into two parts with the third part separate, and there were three teachers for older children with the Master’s sister teaching the middle class. I regarded Mr. and Miss. Dibble as oldish people who were probably due for retirement, but when the War started they stayed on. I think they were sincere people who did their best to teach us and were dedicated to their work.

The lady who taught the middle class used to ride a cycle from Southampton. I think her name was Miss Thatchbury. She was a strict teacher who would make you stand in the corner, or send you to the head teacher to be caned, or if she heard you use bad language tell you to stand in the corner and make you eat a piece of soap to wash your mouth out.

I do not remember very much of my first days of school, just a dim memory of setting off on cold February mornings on the long walk to school on rough gravel roads with a bottle of cold tea or milk, and some sandwiches or home made cake, leaving home just after 8 o’clock and getting to school and wait until the school bell rang at 9 o’clock to go into school. Sometimes on a very wet morning my parents kept me home as there was no way to dry your clothes at school. Kids of those days accepted this as normal and when you were young you can put up with a lot of things like this, after all ‘When ignorance is bliss - tis folly to be wise’, and that was the way of things then. In those early days it seemed a long day to be away from home and I would hurry home before it got dark, tired and very hungry and eager for a good meal, my mother would always have a good hot meal for me. One thing for sure I never went hungry, one of my mothers sayings was ‘What don't fatten fills’.

My first days at school as a five year old are a bit dim, but I do remember Miss Dibble. She was a fussy sort of person who always had a thimble on her finger, and if you did wrong she would come and hold your head with one hand and hit you with the thimble on the other hand. It did not hurt much, but I was a bit scared of her. For my first attempts to write letters or figures I was given a little tin tray with some dry sand in it and a little stick like a pencil with which to copy the letters or figures she had written on the blackboard. It was a very economical way and instead of a fresh page to write on, you just shook the tray and started again.

In my nine years at school, there were four different things to write on, first the sand tray, next a slate and slate pencil, next paper and pencil, and finally in the last years pen and ink, each desk having a little bottle of ink on it and a pen that always seemed to get blobs of ink all over the desk and also a small piece of blotting paper. Whether you were good, bad or indifferent you were moved according to your age. What I remember most was that it was much harder to cope and get things right. In each of the three classes you were all treated the same. If you were what we call bright, you had a good chance to understand what the teacher meant, but if you were not very bright, then a lot of it would be way above your head. There was one lesson for all, whether you had just moved into that class or not. (The Teacher did not and could not separate us into different groups). My parents told me it was very important to be educated, so I tried to learn.

In the middle class, as in the first class, the three R’s were the main theme - reading, writing and arithmetic. My strongest memories of school are of the last years when I was in Mr. Dibble’s class. He was different in that he would talk to us without always sticking to the text books, such as the origin of coal, natural things of the countryside, some of his experiences in life, about big cities and what he had seen there, what it was like when he was a boy and perhaps to let us ask questions about things we did not understand. He was different in that we did not always have to copy from the blackboard or textbooks, but some¬times to write our own version of what he had told us, or about our own lives and life in general.

I was always interested in arithmetic, but now we have changed to litres and metres after a lifetime of feet and inches and pints and gallons. I have had to change to new ways, but I am getting used to it now. Once a year we had exams and you could be classed as standard 3, 4 or 5, even 7. Most of the lessons in Mr. Dibble's class were the same for all of us. I tried to pass the exams to be able to tell my parents about it, but pass or fail was not really important. There was nothing to show for it when you left school, no such thing as the Eleven Plus or ‘O’ levels, no thought of further education for children at my school. Instead, the first priority would be to get a job and start to earn your keep.

These days it is common for school children to take home homework, but at my school we had never heard of such a thing, so at school or not at school, it is both completely different, and it meant that schooling did not come with you to your home and no stress or pressures about having to pass exams. This is not meant as a criticism of present day education, but being a boy at that time did have compensations. My education was pretty basic, but it did give groundwork to go through life and that was the way it was then.

Children of today are far more advanced educationally than we were. They already know a lot before they are five years of age, and it is all important that we have intelligent and educated young people coming along for this country to be able to compete in this world. I think the three teachers at my school were genuine people who did their best to teach us and were well respected. I remember one dinner-time, another boy and I went to a nearby pond to look for moorhens eggs and we both fell in and got very wet. We decided it was best not to go back to school in that state but we happened to have some dry matches, so we lit a fire and tried to dry our clothes and then went home. In the morning we had to explain our absence and we both got three strokes of the cane. It did not hurt very much - just stung a bit. We did not get any eggs, but a good ticking off when we got home.

Several times a year a lady would come to the school to inspect each child's hair, and if she saw signs of nits or lice in it the child would be sent home with a note. All the children were uneasy when she came as they did not want to be sent home because other children would not want to sit next to them for a while. It was common for the boys’ hair to be kept cut very short, and the girls’ hair to be plaited. Sometimes a child would be sent home, but it was not a very common thing to happen. The wives and mothers of those days took a pride in keeping her families clothes and home clean, and had a firm belief in boiling clothes in the copper with some carbolic soap in it.

For heating the school there was an open fireplace in each room, and ~n the winter it was a cheerful sight when we started lessons at 9 o’clock, especially if we had got cold and wet walking to school. But I remember that by midday the fire would be dying down and no more coal would be put on and by the time school was over the fire would be almost out, and we must have been feeling cold by then. But I do remember feeling cold in school, and we must have suffered because we used to get chilblains on our feet and on our ears plus sore red hands. I think Mr. Dibble also suffered from the cold because he stood in front of the fire as much as possible on cold days.

There was a small walled-in playground at the back of the school divided into two, half for the boys and half for the girls, each having two hand basins and two cold water taps and a towel hanging from the wall. It had a roof over it but it was not enclosed. There was no hot water tap and I do not suppose we expected to have any and in the playground were the toilets, but the less said about them the better. Opposite the school was a large area, mostly covered by gorse bushes, where we used to go during the midday break. After we had eaten our sandwiches we would wander into some nearby woods. A few of the children lived near enough to the school to be able to go home to a meal but most lived too far away to be able to do that, some from Toothill, or past the Old Baddesley Church to¬wards Flexford, Castle Lane, Chilworth Old Village, The Red House which is nearly in Bassett, Chilworth Manor, Woodside or Ingers¬ley, or like me from Chilworth Tower. Altogether there was a total of 70-80 pupils from the two parishes and every morning Mr Dibble would keep a register of attendances, and if a child did not attend regularly the school inspector would call on the par¬ents to ask why. Most children did attend regularly in the summer months, but in the winter it was not so easy to start off if it was pouring with rain or the roads covered in snow, but we did not mind the snow as long as it was not too deep, or frosty days when the pond was frozen over and to be able to slide on it.

There were two things that were common in some schools in those days which I think were totally wrong. One was if a boy was not too bright and could not cope with his lessons he could be made to stand in a corner with a dunces cap on his head, which was cruel and stupid. Instead of punishment and humiliation he needed help and consideration. We do not all have the same ability, and if a boy is not too bright it cannot be cured by making a fool of him. Fortunately we did not have dunce’s caps at my school. The other thing I think was totally wrong in those days was the attitude to a left-handed child. There was a strong conviction both at school and by most parents that a left-handed child must be made to be right handed. It’s is just the same as trying to force a right handed person to be left handed. Fortunately those days have now gone and the not too bright child can be helped and encouraged to be a useful member of society and achieve a lot out of life which is far more sense than standing him in a corner and making a fool of him, and a left handed child can be just as good as anyone else, if not better. I do not condemn the teachers of those days or the parents, they were simply doing what they firmly believed was right at the time.

When Mrs. Dibble had a spring-clean, Mr. Dibble would pick out about five boys to go and beat the carpets and I was picked several times and I was very keen to do it. For one reason it would be during lesson time and the other was because it was expected that Mrs. Dibble would give a few coppers. We would go to the back of the school house and the carpets would be brought out and put on bushes or hung on a clothes line, then we would get a stick and beat the dust out of the carpets, all having a real go at them. Mrs. Dibble would then give us a few coppers to be shared between us and we would then all hurry to the village shop kept by Mr. Mark Smith, at the crossroads. This was the only shop in the village then. In the shop were bags of sugar, gro¬ceries, cigarettes, soaps and candles - I can't remember any more, but I do remember the big jars of boiled sweets with screw tops on the shelves. The coppers were handed over and we all watched to see how many we would get. When Mr. Smith gave us the bag we hurried outside and then there was the serious business of sharing them out. We would then walk back to school well satis¬fied with the mornings work.

Although there was only the one village shop at the time, the people did not rely on it entirely. Sometimes a horse drawn wagon would come round and it would have a cover and open sides like a moible shop, with all sorts of things on it, like pots and pans, cups and saucers, pegs, rabbits, candles etc., but it never came to where I lived because it was a bit out of the way.

During the First World War when I was about 11 years old, Mr. Dibble asked all the children to collect acorns and sphagnum moss and bring them to school. I never really understood what would be done with the acorns, but I now have a vague idea that they would be used in making munitions, perhaps gunpowder. We were told that the moss would be used for helping to cure wounds. I knew several places in the woods where it was wet and boggy, and there was always some sphagnum moss there. I can remember seeing a lot of acorns that had been brought in, but not so much moss as it will only grow in a few wet places.

When I came out of school on the short cold winter days, I did not-hang about as I was keen to get home to a good hot meal and get my clothes and boots dry. In the summer it was different. We did not always keep to the road but would stray into the woods or farmers fields on either side and find lots of things to eat, such as wild strawberries (everybodys favourite), blackberries (plenty of them), wild cherries, chestnuts, one special place with sorts of wild raspberries, young turnips from the farmers fields (another special place), a little dark blueberry which grew on a plant about a foot high and they were very nice, my Mother called them ‘Herts‘ and when the wheat and oats had formed and were still soft and white we would help ourselves to them. Another thing we liked was what we called ‘sugar cane’. This was the tip end of new young blackberry shoots which we peeled and ate. Hazel nuts were another favourite and these were nice when they were only half ripe and had only a soft kernel inside, but when they were fully ripe we would try to collect a lot to store for the winter. Crab apples were very sharp and sour and we would eat very few of them when they had fallen. Sloes, the fruit of the Blackthorn, are another fruit that are very sour, very small and almost black and are very ripe in November. I liked the taste but not too many of them.

The bright red fruit of the Hawthorn was edible, but there was not too much taste to them. Sometimes we would go a different way home, through the old road and through the old village where there was a big old White Heart Cherry Tree overhanging the road, and when the cherries were ripe we would search for any fallers and try to knock some down with some sticks. The tree was in a Mr. and Mrs. James’ garden and I think they knew we were there, but they did not seem to mind us getting some berries, as it was taken for granted that we would scrump a few apples from several gardens on the way home and try not to get caught at it. As a schoolboy I was well aware that some berries and fruits were poisonous and best left alone, such as Deadly Nightshade, with its scarlet berries in the hedgerows and the Woody Nightshade which had small black berries, the Cuckoo Pint, Ivy berries, the red berries of the Yew tree (although birds eat these) and we would not touch certain types of mushroom and toadstools. These days the only thing I would eat would be the Wild Strawberry, but it was different when I was a hungry schoolboy.

On my way home from school there was a place we called ‘The Holly Bushes’, where the road divided. The new road· went onto the Clump Inn at Chilworth and the old road went to the old village, and at the start of the old road there was a small area beside the road where the gypsies liked to camp. I remember walking past them and seeing them sat round their fire with a big iron pot suspended from it. Sometimes they would speak to us, but they would never interfere with us or attempt to harm us. We were not afraid of them, but at the same time we did not want to mix with them, as we were not used to their way of life. I do not remember that they ever caused any trouble, no doubt they did some poaching and had some the Squire's pheasants and rabbits, and the gamekeeper would try to catch them, but a few rabbits less did not matter very much. We firmly believed that gypsies ate hedgehogs and that they encased the hedgehogs in clay and baked them. I do not really know if they did. They did not stay there very long, perhaps two or three days and they would be off again. I think they were legally entitled to stay one night, but if they stayed too long, the big village policeman would arrive on his bicycle and tell them to move on. I can still remember following the typical gypsy caravan on the road to Chilworth, with the gypsy woman sat at the back making clothes pegs and the line of shavings that would be left in the road, and two dogs tied to the back axle, walking under the caravan. The dogs were always the lurcher or greyhound type, able to run fast and turn quickly (just right for catching rabbits). I wondered where the gypsies came from and where they were going. I would be going home to a nice meal and sleep in a warm bed, and they would be somewhere camped by the roadside with their fire and cooking pot.

Perhaps they knew the real meaning of freedom and wanted to live their lives that way. The gypsy women used to get some money by calling at houses with their wicker baskets to sell clothes pegs and bunches of wild flowers such as primroses, bluebells, lucky heather, daffodils, kingcups, cowslips and snowdrops. They usually knew where to find all the wild flowers. It did not cost much to feed their horse. When they camped for the night at the Holly Bushes, they would first hobble the horse and then turn it loose to feed off the grass by the roadside and it would be free all night and caught again the next morning. Being hobbled it could not move around very fast and there was very little traffic on the road in those days. To hobble a horse, a short piece of rope is tied to its two front legs, keeping them about a foot apart and then it can only take short steps. Perhaps the gypsy children I saw never went to school, and perhaps they thought it strange that other children like me should have to go to school and be shut up for hours in a classroom, and in their own way they accepted their way of life, and like their parents they knew what freedom really was and that their school was the wildlife and natural things of the countryside.

One place that always interested me on my home was the Blacksmiths Shop at Chilworth. Mr. Barns, the Blacksmith, always seemed to be busy. He would put new shoes on all the horses in the area - the Squires horses, the Farmers' horses, the local Milkman's horses and any others in the area. Mr Carter James would take two big horses from Mr. Fray's farm for them to be fitted with new shoes, and I liked to watch Mr. Barnes forge a strong iron shoe. How he would take a red hot iron from the forge and hammer it into shape on the anvil and how he made the right number of nail holes in the shoe. When he was satisfied that the shoe was finished, he would give it a final heating on the forge and then put it in a tepid water tank to anneal it and harden it, then he would fit it which always seemed to fit just right. Mr. Barnes always wore a strong leather apron and I would watch when he put the leg of the powerful horse between his legs and pull of the old shoe, then rasp to level off the face of the hoof before fitting the new hot shoe. There was always a strong smell of smoke when he did this and I wondered if it hurt the horse. How quickly he nailed on the shoe, the nails always piercing the side of the hoof and quickly twisted off. A final rub with a file and the craftsman had finished a good job. Besides shoeing horses he did a lot of other things such as mending pots and pans, making chains, forging each link, repairing farm machinery, the ploughs, chain harrows, mowing machines, garden tools, fit new iron tyres to cart wheels, making hinges for the big five barred wooden gates that were common then - a very busy man and if it was anything to do with iron he could fix it. Mr. Carter James would sit and take a rest until all the shoes were fitted. He would then sit side saddle on one of the horses and take them back to the farm. Next day we might seem him ploughing in the farmer's field, his two horses side by side, nodding their heads as they pulled the plough across the field with Mr. James holding onto the plough handles taking pride in keeping the furrows straight. Midday he would put nose-bags on the horses and sit down to his ploughmans lunch, probably part of a cottage loaf and some cheese. At the end of the day he would take the horses back to the farm stables, groom them, feed them and then go home. He would have had a hard day and must have been very tired. He deserved his rest while the horses were being shod. Mr. Barnes still found time to grow vegetables for his family in his large garden at the back of the Smithy. The Blacksmiths shop and the pair of cottages have gone now. No sign of a once important part of a village life. The big farm horses have given way to the tractor and combine harvester. Horse drawn vehicles have given way to the motor car and the huge transport lorries. Those easy going days have now gone with everything now speeded up with time so important, and things not going fast enough. I have now accepted the way of life as it is, with all its present day improvements and I would not want to go back to those days. There is no comparison between then and now, but quite likely people of those days and children like me did get as much out of life as the present day generation.

The old order changeth and giveth place to the new and what was accepted then would be out of the question now. Just before we came to the Holly Bushes the woodland gave way to the farmers' fields, and in the woodland there we would find the little Dormouse nest. It would be about three or four feet above the ground in the bramble or hazelnut bushes and it was round like a ball about four inches across made of dry grass and moss, with a hole just big enough for the mouse to get in. The Dormouse favoured this place because in the summer it could go into the fields, and by climbing the cornstalks it would help itself to wheat or oats and perhaps take some to store for the winter. It did little damage and there were not any big numbers of them, in fact this was the only place I knew where they existed. The Dormouse has pretty brown fur with a furry tail and I took one home once and tried to make a pet of it, but it did not live very long as I did not understand how to look after it. The nest is very important to the Dormouse as it is used as a nursery for it's young ones and is a good place to hide during the day, then look for food at night. It hibernates a lot during very cold winter days when it will curl up snug and warm in it's well insulated nest. Similar to the Red Squirrel it only comes out just long enough to get some food when it gets hungry, when it will raid the food store and then get back to it's warm nest again. The Dormouse is becoming scarce now because the old style mowing machine that cut the corn would be laid down behind it and the mouse had a chance to escape but it became very much at risk. with the introduction of the Combine Harvester, when it could be swept in the machine and killed. The Dormouse was never a pest as it lived out in the countryside away from human habitation and relied on itself with what little wheat or oats it took, which was never missed. Most important the Dormouse is part of our countryside and hopefully it will survive.

During my last years at school my pockets were always filled with odds and ends, such as a catapult and some little round stones, a pocket knife, cigarette cards and bits of string. If Mr. Dibble saw that I had a catapult he would take it from me and put it in his desk and sometimes when we came out of school the Village Policemen would be waiting to take our catapults, but we did not worry too much as catapult elastic was pretty easy to get. Mr Mark Smith sold it in his shop at the crossroads, the only trouble being was getting some money to pay for it, so it was always best to have some spare elastic, a nice fork cut from the hazel bushes, a bit of string and the soft tongue from an old boot to make another one. All along the New Road were telephone posts carrying two wires and each post had two small white insulators (we called them telephone cups). These were favourite targets for practising catapulting. They were very hard and we seldom broke one. It is fairly accurate with a catapult at close range and it can be dangerous, but I do not think that we did much damage. My parents knew I had one and did not mind as it was the part of the way of life of a country schoolboy in those days. Another place we used to try our catapults on was Chilworth Church, we would try to shoot up through the wooden slats to try and make one of the two bells ring in the belfry. If we did hit one we would be gone out of the area immediately and would not go back there again for a long time in case the Village Policeman would be waiting to catch us because we were a bit scared of him.

I am a member of North Baddesley Old Aged Pensioners Club and several times a year the North Baddesley School invites our club to the school to be entertained by the children there. They always put on a good show and I enjoy watching them. They are aged up to eleven years old, when they then go to the Mountbatten School. I was surprised to see what they can do and how talented some of them are. It is interesting to see what the school is like and comparing it to when I went to school there. It has changed beyond all recog¬nition. The old ‘T’ shaped building has been extended and there is a separate new building, changed for the better with all its facilities, such as provision of hold and cold food, heating, general equipment to help with the education and proper play¬grounds. The children look clean and healthy and smart in their school uniforms, and what I thought was very important was the relationship between the pupil and teacher as the children seemed eager to please the teachers and vice versa, the teacher eager to teach in a friendly sort of way. I was pleased with what I saw and I went away feeling that the young children I saw there (who are the grown ups of tomorrow) will look after England and do their best to conserve it and keep it a good place to live in. Good luck to them and I hope they will get as much out of life as I have done.