LIFESTORY
SCHOOL MEMORIES
Living at Biddestone, some 10 miles from Bath, but with a sister, daughter & family etc. still in the city, weekly visits were made before Covid 19. My two grand daughters (9 & 6 years) were wheeled or walked around central Bath on a regular basis. They could never imagine the city that we grew up in. It is beautiful, crowded (still car polluted) and very sophisticated but all the real heavy industry, soot-blackened buildings and damage from the German bombing (except for one wall in James Street West) has been erased. As I walk through Abbey Green, around Kingsmead Square or visit Sainsbury’s in Green Park Station I can still ‘feel’ those daily evolutions as we walked to lessons. Some hazy recollections of views long gone still return. (Correct me if my memory is wrong!)
I grew up in Larkhall from 1945 onwards so never experienced the bombing. However my family were billeted by the Admiralty from Bexley Heath, Kent to ‘Glen Rosa’ in St. Saviours Road, Larkhall. As an Admiralty Senior Draughtsman my father was in a ‘reserved occupation’ (working on HMS Vanguard) but did fire-watching at night. He was off duty on 25th April 1942, the first night of the bombing. A 500kg (HE1246) German bomb landed in the back garden and my parents woke to moonlight through their bedroom ceiling. Plaster fell in two year old sister’s cot. Blackout curtains were studded with glass, as was the floor, but no one was hurt. I have a piece of shrapnel to this day! On 26th April they borrowed a motor-bike & side-car from a neighbour and fled to Sally-in-the-Woods with other ‘Bath Trekkers’. Local farmer Mr Lewis discovered them in a cave due sister’s crying and invited them to stay. A life-long friendship ensued.
In 1946 they were evicted from ‘Glen Rosa’, due to the birth of my brother, and we moved to the basement of The Yews in Claremont Rd, now St. Saviours Church Rectory. In 1951 the government finally released the Bexley Heath House they had requisitioned (1939) but by then we had had a new house built at ‘Briar Cottage’ 14 Dowding Road (1950).
After primary school in St. Saviours the first day at the City of Bath Technical School arrived in September 1956. David Upton from ‘Glen Rosa’ met me by St. Saviours Church to catch the No.11 bus to the Guildhall, but as we entered Abbey Street he disappeared fast! No sensible kid would be associated with a ‘1st Year’! He ignored me from then onwards. In the gateway of Weymouth House another new lad called Francis Baker met me and showed me our coat pegs on the inner staircase near the staffroom. Joe Cannon was our Form Master as we were labelled 1X. First lesson was copying a timetable from the board. I think the Weymouth House classrooms went from ‘1’ (Bill Hayman) on the ground floor to Mr Box/Peter Coard’s Artroom on the 3rd floor (13?). On the ground floor was the hall etc. with mainly maths, English & languages, plus a staffroom, Nick’s office and the entrance to a boiler house, sciences on the second floor with physics (Dicky Harbour) & chemistry (Sammy Seal) labs in end rooms and biology (Stan Stennet) on the right. Top floor was less specialist with geography (Alvis) and the library in side rooms and art & technical drawing at the end. Prefects lurked at the top of the outside staircase that led to the playground. The middle floor had a washroom but toilets were outside across the rear playground.
I don’t recall a teacher leading us to the other sites. Two ‘general rooms’ were in No.4 Abbey Street (opposite Hand’s Dairy). The basement & hall of St. James’s Memorial Hall was used for music (Sid) and exams (now an Arts Centre). Two rooms in the Old Chief Medical Officer’s House at Bilbury Lane (part of Technical College) were used for RE (Major Webb), history (Minnikin) and French (Joe). An outside staircase climbed to the gym in the Albert Memorial Wing of the Technical College (Jimmy Edwards). Cold walk-through showers! Huge medicine balls & coir mats! Then there was the basement of the Methodist Chapel in Westgate Buildings (entered from Kingsmead Square) used as a dining hall and exam room.
Woodwork (Ray Jones) and metalwork (Morgan?) in the Old Gaol Twerton was usually first lesson, sometimes followed by painting & decorating (master’s name?) in the huts on the grounds of the Domestic Science College Brougham Hayes. I travelled home for lunch each day and then back to Weymouth House in the afternoon. A bicycle eventually helped. Sport at Glasshouse, again-cold showers (Jimmy, Jack Lyshon, Pappin, Webb et al!)
I think we were allowed ten minutes between lessons (usually double periods in outlying rooms) but breaks and lunchtime were used for transfers to Brougham Hayes/Twerton/ Glasshouse. I recall the bombed building next to the playground, the gutted St. James’s Church, a tuck shop opposite The Modeller’s Den (long closed). Another sweet shop in Kingsmead Square. Rubble covered acres next to Avon Street (except for Tommy Best’s Surplus Store & a motorbike shop). Along James Street West were numerous ruins. The wall of old Labour Exchange now survives as part of a hall of residence, but Holy Trinity Church has gone and even the replacement buildings were rebuilt! Green Park Station was running with steam from the Midland Railway & Somerset & Dorset (British Rail?) engines, mixed with coal dust from the trucks. Over the Midland Bridge or along the Avon bank to Victoria Bridge were numerous industrial buildings, a wood yard etc. A steam laundry whiffed & Pitman’s printing presses (derelict) rumbled as you walked to the Old Gaol in Stuart Place (mostly demolished). A walk beside the GWR allowed more views of steam trains as you went to Brougham Hayes.
Games at Glasshouse was a No.3 bus ride from the Balustrade if in the morning and usually a bicycle ride through Holloway, Bear Flat & Entry Hill after lunch. With a 3-speed BSA bike a long push up but great coming down again! The lean-to bike sheds at Weymouth House were between the back of Manvers Street (old city wall foundations) and the school. Milk crates were scattered beside them.
I recall the masters as very strict, but usually fair. ‘Killer’ Keating’s worst punishment was to draw a dot on the roller blackboard, in the room next to the playground door at Weymouth House, make you stand with your nose touching it and then raise the board until you were on your toes! Classic ‘stress-position’ torture! Jimmy gave you hell if you forgot your kit (he had a pair of pink shorts ready) or failed to collect your watch after PE. Major Webb could be distracted into Middle Eastern war experiences if the subject was the Old Testament. Minnikin would fill the roller blackboard at least twice with notes on ‘British History 1760 to 1914’ but hardly said a word in his lessons! Stan’s biology ‘definitions’ tests were extreme tests of memory. (‘Symbiosis’- the living together of organisms to their mutual advantage.) The room on the top floor where Alvis taught geography had new desks that smelt of wood shavings but it was hard to stay awake as he really liked the sound of his own voice! Tests for each subject in autumn & summer terms. A week of exams! They were human though. When Richard Brown’s text-book wrapped copies of ‘Health & Efficiency (that he rented by the lesson) cascaded down the internal staircase to Bill’s feet they were confiscated, but he found them being read in the staffroom when he tried to collect them after school!
Then and Now
The locations of a typical Weymouth House day in the 1950s.
No.4 Abbey Street looks unchanged and may still be owned by an educational group called ‘44AD Art Space’. I only remember ‘humanities’ lessons upstairs here.
Philippa Savory’s antique shop has a new owner but the Crystal Palace has hardly changed.
The hook that once held the black wrought iron gate into Weymouth House still survives.
Marks & Sparks loading bay has the back wall of the playground beyond which is Manvers Street. The old corrugated iron bicycle shed ‘flashing’ groove can still be seen. The three courses of city wall now have a plaque!
St James’s Church is long gone. The edge of the new Southgate precinct has obliterated any sign of the road junction with Lower Borough Walls and the tuck shop is now Digiprint.
St James’s Memorial Hall is the same externally but has a sound stage inside and a cafe in the basement. It is now the ‘Arts Centre’. Sid would have liked the focus on music and we would have preferred the cafe to exams!
Over the road from St. James’s burial ground (now a park) the Chief Medical Officer’s House in Bilbury Lane has survived as part of the Gainsborough Hotel but the gate has been blocked. We used this to enter the classrooms and the external stair to the gym in the Albert Memorial Wing of the Tech College. The chapel survives too. The stairs run between the single windows and the banisters across them were only installed when Richard Brown fell through the lower one when he missed the landing when rushing down!
The hotel has been rebuilt over the Albert wing but old demolition photos showed the white panels of the internal walls where wall bars once hung.
Westgate Buildings Methodist Chapel is now a Tescos! I suppose at least the food connection remains!
I cannot recall the first trip to Twerton Gaol and Brougham Hayes very clearly, but soon the walk at morning break or arrival by 9.00am were part of the weekly routine. Walking along James Street West acres of broken wasteland was to your left with some old hutments, Tommy Best etc. standing out. A strange circular concrete track with a central pivot was in front of the latter. At weekends tethered miniature racing cars drove around in circles on it. Past Avon Street the bombed Labour Exchange was still used and then the shell of Holy Trinity Church was on the right. Wooden props held the walls and rough barriers were made from piled ashlar blocks.
Green Park Station was a hive of activity. Cars & passengers at the blackened front, steam belching through the glass roof and that wonderful steam engine smell.
Midland Bridge Road crossed the Avon and was not joined by Pines Way then. The whole area was a marshalling yard with blackened stone buildings, signals and numerous lines. Mainly coal trucks for the gas works and an entrance for lorries to pick up domestic supplies.
Opposite the junction with the Lower Bristol Road was the gate to St James’ Cemetery and further along on the edge of the railway a canteen for Stothert & Pitt’s workers (now Sainsburys). I used the bus stop outside (No.4?) to return to Kingsmead Square sometimes. Opposite was the Drill Hall gate (demolished) replaced by a Premier Inn.
The road met the alternative route across Victoria Bridge at the foot of Brougham Hayes. The terrace by Lorne Road opposite had a couple more houses across the junction but the small shops remain much the same. Crossing the road one passed a laundry (still running in a newer building) and turned into Dorset Street(?) and had East Twerton School on your left. (There may have been an alley short cut here?) Right into Caledonian Road the Governor’s House of the ‘Old Gaol’ came into sight masked by later garage-type buildings. The old exercise yard was to the left in Stuart Place.
Normally ‘Jonah’ Jones was not there on arrival for woodwork so rough play happened in that playground. One former resident opposite reported that a football from here knocked over his dad’s tin of paint into the doorway of the house and Jonah cleared it up! I recall a trade in ammunition here (some live) brought in by a Corsham lad. (The Second World War underground stores surrounded Corsham and, Thingley in particular, had a surface railway yard strewn with disgarded bullets).
The carpenter’s shop was up a fire-escape in the gaol. Two of us shared a bench with a vice each and the tools were hung on the walls with their own silhouette. First task was a deal seed label. Planing, sawing, chiseling, sanding etc. Jonah (very suspect character!) would have ‘favourites’ who he would joke with and even tickle. One day he gave Richard Brown a ‘DA’ haircut, to match his own, with a chisel! Same lad was also punished for rudeness by being given a block of hardwood and told to make a matchstick using a plane! We moved on to a box (halving joints & heating up smelly animal glue) and then our own tasks (magazine rack & piano type stool- I mugged up for ‘O’ & ‘A’ Levels on that seat in my bedroom!). I think I dropped woodwork after two years.
Metalwork was on the ground floor and (I assume in the newer building to the right of the gaol). I recall making a set-square (cutting, filing, brazing & polishing ) of mild steel, some kind of caliper (knurling, using a tap & die etc.) and a garden line set (blacksmithing & soldering). We wore the same carpenter’s aprons and soon they had small burn holes when using the hammer & anvil. If the day’s task was done, melting lead offcuts (from the Tech College courses?) in an open pan was often a favourite task. I cannot remember the master’s name. A thick-set chap but not Mower. Again Richard Brown sinned. We were shown how to use an oxyacetylene cutter by him. Richard ignored the warnings, turned off the acetylene and stood there transfixed as the flame melted its way back along the rubber hose to the oxygen cylinder. Master just reached it in time. Again I dropped metalwork so never experienced the lessons with lathe etc. I only heard about the scalps hanging from the drill stands in Brougham Hayes. We did turn up a brass cannon barrel at the gaol in a ‘free’ end of term session!
At morning break we walked Stuart Place to the railway turned left and on to Brougham Hayes bridge, crossed the road and entered the Domestic Science College grounds by a large wooden gate. Gravel paths led to old ex Admiralty hutments (some similar survived at Corsham near the old Royal Arthur site). Beyond were wooden Pratten buildings (I used several of these in Hullavington when I was headmaster there) but I never entered them. My option of painting & decorating was taken by a tall, curly haired master (name?) who read American gun magazines ‘Guns & Ammo’. Due to the nature of paint & glue we spent hours reading these magazines as our work dried. First task was sand-papering a yard square of plywood already painted by another pupil. When back to the raw wood we learned how to heat knotting & apply, use a paint brush (drip paint then). I think it took half a term to prime, undercoat & gloss paint this damned board! ‘Laying off’ was a term drilled into my head!
More to my taste was sign-writing. I made much use of this skill in later life as a teacher. Again this course was dropped. I do recall visiting the old hutments (probably in 4th Year 1960?) to strip them out. They had asbestos roofs and insulation and we boys knocked down partitions, wrecked ceilings and made a bonfire outside! All under the guidance of a teacher!
If back to Weymouth House we would always cross Victoria Bridge and walk along the Avon to the Midland Bridge for our return. I soon gained a bicycle so could ride home to Larkhall at lunchtime.
Despite my later academic career I value those experiences, and until recent laziness (or more affluence?) would always tackle DIY.
Brougham Hayes -1960-63
In 1956 the austere building of the Domestic Science College loomed over the old hutments at Brougham Hayes as one entered the large wooden gate into the grounds. When lessons were over the walk along the stone wall to the Lower Bristol Road passed an ugly industrial-style building with large doors used by the Territorial Army. Standing at the bus stop outside the Stothert & Pitt canteen a gothic gateway with guardhouse was opposite (demolished 1969). At the time I never realised that this was the original entrance to what was to become the City of Bath Technical School in 1960.
The foundation stone for the new building was laid on the 11th May 1864 after ‘Sydenham Furlong’ had been bought by Somerset a year earlier. A new Militia Stores was built for the 2nd Militia Regiment of Somerset. Thinking back the front part was likely a barrack building with the rear sections (used by Peter Coard as an Art room etc.) stores, stables etc. The art room was up an outside staircase so possibly a hay loft or similar? The original building was much more elaborate than the one we see today. An 1896 photograph shows numerous chimneys, church-style windows in the central block & one wing, less windows elsewhere but some of the lower ones with ornamental stonework. There were more doors indicating division into several dwellings. The militia moved in by 1868/69. By 1871 13 officers with families and 5 musicians were living there with another 3 officers with families at the barrack gate. The grass area between the two sites was a drill ground.
A huge (Childers Reforms) reorganisation of the British Army occurred in 1881. Many regiments were combined so the 2nd Militia Regiment of Somerset became the 4th Battalion Prince Albert’s Somerset Light Infantry and moved to the Jellallabad Barracks in Taunton. The main building was vacated but the 1st Somerset Rifle Volunteer Corps took over a ‘Rifle Volunteer Drill Ground’ and the gatehouse c.1881/86. By 1904 a drill hall was built on the cemetery side behind the gate and on 24th July 1915 another was opened on Brougham Hayes. This had various military & police functions until its demolition in 2014.
The empty barracks were occupied by the Somerset Certified Industrial School in 1881. Original accommodation was for 180 boys, reduced to 150 but often exceeded later on. The building had internal alterations between 1897-1900. This link between the Technical School and ex-penal institutions (Twerton Gaol was used by the boys too) remained until its closure! Perhaps there is a message there? From 1866 the school was founded:- “to reclaim abandoned boys, and to rescue those whose unhappy circumstances would inevitably lead them to crime and profligacy”. An earlier 1861 Act included any child apparently under the age of fourteen found begging or receiving alms, wandering and not having any home or visible means of support, in the company of reputed thieves, living in a brothel, or living with or associating with common or reputed prostitutes (1880), or whose parents declared him to be beyond their control. Also included was any child apparently under the age of twelve who, having committed an offence punishable by imprisonment or less. (Sound familiar?) The regime must have been harsh!
By1897 the school had 63 acres of land, cultivated as a farm and market garden for a shop in Bath, to raise funds. Boys worked on the market garden and farm, as bakers, carpenters, cow, horse & pig boys, needle-workers, shoemakers, shop-boys, tailors. They even had a band. Some of the old drill ground was used for football and cricket, but also physical and military drills. Inside was a large recreation area, with lockers, used as a gym and reading room. The well known image from this date shows boys with adults in military uniform perhaps from the Rifle Volunteers. The school, renamed Somersetshire Home for Boys, closed on June 17th, 1929.
The site then underwent a major renovation programme at a cost of £20,999 to become a Domestic Science and Technical College. The post 1934 building had substantial re-modelling to the façade, chimneys were removed, doors closed and extra windows added. Playing fields with a hockey pitch and a tennis court appeared on the drill ground.
Four years later the entire site was requisitioned by the Admiralty at the start of the Second World War. Like numerous hotels in the city, rooms became offices. (My father worked in a converted bathroom as a drawing office in the old Grand Pump Room Hotel in Stall Street at this time). New hutments covered the tennis court. When the brick blocks were erected at Warminster Road, Ensleigh & Combe Down by 1944 the Admiralty left the site and postwar the Domestic Science and Technical College returned. The huts remained and became extra classrooms. Bath Education Authority added Pratten huts in 1947 for use by the City of Bath Technical School and College. By the mid 1950s plans were afoot to move the Domestic Science College to Sion Hill. Mary Berry, of TV fame, was a student.
An architect’s plan dated 1958 proves that arrangements were in hand to convert the old barracks yet again into a boys school. The internal arrangements, new hall, gym, dining room and classrooms in one courtyard were in place by 1960, but the engineering shops at the rear were not added until 1964. This was also when the huts were removed and the tennis courts reinstated.
I can recall excitement, tinged with nostalgia, about the closure of Weymouth House in the 1959/1960 terms when the Domestic Science College was known to have gone from Brougham Hayes. As I had dropped practical subjects I never saw the rebuilding going on but think some of us were called in to demolish the internals of one Admiralty hutment at that time. There was some kind of open day in summer 1960 as we were shown the new premises before we occupied them the following autumn. The smell of fresh paint, polished wood and new furniture & equipment sticks in my mind. Also a sense of space. Again I am sure some of us moved kit to the classrooms, delivered from Weymouth House, in those final July days after exams were over. The large gym (and hot showers) impressed me. I cannot recall any ‘farewell’ events at Weymouth House.
From Larkhall the journey to school at Brougham Hayes was doubled each day. My trusty bicycle carried me most times (4 miles a return trip) as, at first, I went home for lunch. I think there was a bicycle shed in a yard at the rear near the railway line. We mainly entered the building through one of the courtyard doors as coats were hung near the shower block. Gleaming lino seemed everywhere. At assembly the staff sat on the stage/dining area and prefects controlled the rows of kids by sitting around the walls. The flowery curtains were still present at the 1992 reunion. A small projection room was accessed above the school entrance. Nearby was a tiered lecture room.
Lessons continued pre ‘O’ Level in light & airy classrooms and well provided labs on the upper floors. A huge amount of time was spent copying notes from blackboards, especially in Minnikins history & Alvis’s geography lessons. Maps of Europe and UK were annotated with products and industries from memory to be regurgitated in the exams. Sammy Seale loved working out logarithms on the board but did manage to blow things up on occasion and Bill Hayman’s algebra & trigonometry was barely mastered (just enough to scrape a pass!!) Dicky Harbour continued to enthral with ‘Wheatstone Bridges’, Leclonche cells and lengthy definitions of physical properties. Stan Stennet’s descriptions of the Amoeba & Hydra expanded into human reproduction with much hilarity (in the back row!). Games continued at Glasshouse, sometimes with a bus there. The double-decker nearly overturned as we passed the City of Bath Girls’ School when all crowded on to one side of the top deck! Break was taken in the courtyards with prefects manning the central glassed corridor and roving the classrooms. Peter Coard’s art room up an outside stair was crammed with architectural stonework from demolished buildings and a huge collection of fire marks. He often fired the pottery kiln during lessons. His water colour copies of firing temperatures hung in the pottery and sometimes one of his paintings was on an easel. Life drawing of some member of the class in PE shorts was a common activity. (I learned later from Dan Brown that Peter was gay!! Was unaware of this when he was my teacher.)
In the sweltering June of 1961 the hall became an ‘O’ Level torture chamber. Mates who had shared lessons drifted away as 5x was no more.
The dreaded envelope arrived in August and 6th Form began a month later. Ex French & German classes now blended so buddies were made from other experiences. I was offered a transfer to City of Bath Boys to study history but would I join the enemy I had fought at rugby so often? Not me, so I stayed on to study geography, geology, biology & art ‘A’ Levels. I was the only Lower Sixth student with the latter. PE (mainly basket ball) & games was still timetabled but small labs were now occupied instead of classrooms. The violent central heating made these rooms sweat boxes in winter and poor air circulation fostered drowsiness. No more breaks outside as the classroom to the right of the glassed corridor was a ‘Common Room’. No catering so ‘The Scala’ coffee bar became a venue. Teachers were mainly Alvis, James, King, Stennet & Coard. General Studies on Friday afternoon was usually a debate but once was ballroom dancing with Mrs Williams! I think there was some evening event planned. Rugby still took my weekends. Away matches to Kingswood, City of Bath Boy, St. Brendons, Wells Cathedral School etc., Tennis in Sydney Gardens in summer. Became a lab assistant for Stan Stennet after school so was paid! Field trips to Dale Fort (geology) & Preston Montfort (biology). A wonderful steam train ride to the former near Pembroke that started at Green Park Station (I think!). Hours spent with Peter Coard completing paintings etc. Sadly I destroyed all my annotated notes! He sometimes gave me a lift into Bath in an old Morris.
1962 now a prefect. Keith Griffin was Head Boy with his own study near the library & Nick’s office and John E. Hughes, as library prefect, had one as well next to the latter. We dumped our webbing rucksacks in his room most days. Discipline still heavy. Paul Spens thought we could make coffee in the biology lab (using bunsen burner, flask etc.) at break time. I got a rocket when Stan discovered this! Even worse, after the swimming gala at Beau Street Baths we all cut the last biology lesson, except Sam Crook! Stan had us for 5 days laying paving slabs in his garden near the railway. He kept bees there and during one lesson I was the only one without a face net & gloves! “They won’t bother you Priest!” he said, but they did! I was often quite late in school with lab duties and art room work. The connecting chemistry lab was an attraction as we four assistants tried out explosive mixtures or even had battles with biros, wet blotting paper & pins! Poo! The pongs sometimes! One day a flask of sulphuric acid broke and the lad stood there as his lab coat dissolved, followed by shirt & trousers! We stripped him so he was not harmed but had to concoct an excuse for Sammy Seale about the accident.
Gave up rugby in the Upper Sixth but enjoyed the odd game of basket ball and tennis. We lifted Paul Spens’s little Austin 7 over the wall of the Holburne Museum one day! Study seemed relentless, but the school ran very smoothly. Results were high. A hot June again in 1963 and numerous exams in that hall. Friends drifted away as did I.
If I had known the future I would have been far more grateful to the old Tech than I was then! I was one of the last students to see Nick in his office on the final day of his life. He seemed quite cheerful and I sometimes wonder how he could have been that way with his own potential doom in his head. The suicide pact took place that night. The contents of a letter written to the Bath Coroner was never revealed. His study floor was strewn with prospectuses from universities and colleges. As I lacked a foreign language qualification only three universities were open for entry, and, if memory serves me correctly, they specialised in engineering subjects. He advised me to look at a future teaching career. The best option was a four year degree course at Borough Road Teacher Training College at Isleworth (the oldest institution with that specialism and with the hardest entry requirements). I duly applied, gained entry and began a primary/secondary course in geography & history that autumn. Minnikin's teaching was sufficient for a subsidary subject but my private study of ancient history seemed to keep me up with students with an 'A' Level. Life in London was a delight so I did not bother to return for prize giving in autumn 1963. Life had moved on.
Back to years 1955 - 59 HERE
