School Days in The Sixties.

Hazel Leys School c1960
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I attended this school between 1968 and 1972. I was also a pupil at Hazel Leys Infants and Juniors. Both these schools were on the same site as the Secondary Modern but not shown in this 1955 photo. I presume the Juniors is yet to be built and the Infants, if built, is behind the camera to the left. Judging by this photo Gainsborough Rd is yet to be extended to enter the lower Beanfield Estate. The Beanfield is probably what it was before the houses were built. Bean fields. In 1957 I moved with my family into a brand new Corporation house on the Beanfield, 32 Thirsk Rd when I was a seven month old baby. My father had got work in the steelworks and had been living in Weldon in Stuarts and Lloyds accommodation for a year or so before my Mum amd myself came down from Scotland. I presume when this photo was taken work is just starting to buld the Beanfield Estate. Where the camera person is standing there is a brook. I dont know if he or she is infront of the brook or it is concealed underneath the long grass at the foot of the photo. I remember as a three year old this brook teeming with fresh water life. I use to fish and play there a lot with my friends. I remember over my childhood how this lovely brook turned into nothing more than a sewer with nothing able to survive in it. No doubt a consequence of the urban buld of Beanfield and the Lincoln. When I was small I use to go for walks with my mum and little sister in the fields to the right of this photo. What became the Lincoln and Kingswood. Ponies were tethered in these fields and there was at the top towards the woods one cow pasture. I rember once seeing a Deer graze near the cow pasture. This all changed in the early sixties with the Lincoln being built. During the estates construction the whole area was a massive play ground for us kids. No barriors or walls in those days to keep people out of building sites. We had a ball playing in the site at weekends and early evenings when the work men had packed up and gone home. I attended Hazel Leys Sec when Mr Reynolds was Head Master. Wonder what happened to him. I left the school to go to Kettering Tech where I did my O and A Levels. Most of the green space in the photo was made into playing and sports fields for the schools. Those were the days when important things like fresh air and exercise was considered essential for all children. I have good memories of playing rounders in the field directly before the school. Though a line of trees, one of which I helped to plant, was in place by the end of the sixties.