Children interviewing Elizabeth Cresswell

Games

We all skipped.  Everybody skipped.  “All in together girls, this fine weather girls, when I say your birthday please jump out.”  And then you’d got to jump back in, and nearly the whole class would be in one great long skipping rope.  They used to have the coke round the corner, where everybody used to run up and down on it.  You weren’t supposed to.

Rose Queen

The celebration was held across the road.  It was a field, the Vicarage field, but it’s changed now.  And I think all the class did join in.  And it was every year.  They had a Queen every year.

Class discipline

Margaret had brought her old school reports in.  She says forty-eight in a class.  A fair few isn’t it.   So, no wonder they had such iron discipline.  You weren’t allowed to talk, or anything.  Nobody asked you what you thought.  Nobody asked anything, you were terrified of them. 

Margaret asks the children if they are scared when they are at school.  They say sometimes.

Times tables

Margaret asks them how they learn their tables.  Does somebody shout them? A pupil answers that they just stand up and say our times tables and get a sticker for doing it.  

Desks

Margaret explains that they had individual desks, with an inkwell.  All the way through my reports I was told I was very untidy because I got blots on everything.  It was very different.  Of course if you classes of that much, you would have to be very disciplined wouldn’t you.  You couldn’t just chat or whatever, it would be entirely different wouldn’t it.  

Knitting

We did knitting. [The children do sewing for Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day].  

Dining

The children explain that they eat in the Main Hall.

School

Margaret explains that outside they used to have Virginia Creeper on the wall and it had great big red leaves on it in the autumn.  And we used to collect these great big red leaves.