Our Lady Of Compassion School

A Memory of Formby.

I was at Our Lady's from 1960 - '66. The most abiding memories are the smells - of disinfectant in the outside toilets, which were frozen in winter, and horrible lukewarm milk in those small bottles which were always kept in crates next to the massive heating pipes. Fish for dinner every Friday in that huge cavern of a hall could be detected throughout the Victorian building from 9 am onwards!
The gas lights which hissed and popped on dark winter days used to frighten me, it was like being in a time warp. You had to be careful of the floor in classrooms - bare floorboards, full of splinters. We were not able to see outside through the high windows when sitting, (we were always sitting, to get up from your place needed a life or death reason).
A cardboard 'Tidy Box' on the rungs under your chair in the infants, containing essentials such as a tobacco tin with 10 shells to count when doing 'sums'. Also a pencil (yes we did write on paper but only for sums) and a small framed blackboard for writing on.
I remember singing in Latin from the age of 5, nobody ever explained what the words were about but we all seemed happy to sing away at Benediction every Wednesday after lunch at the church next door.
My first reading books: "Happy Venture Readers" stories of Dick, Dora, Nip and Fluff, so boring.
We were taught to write in Italic style, I remember struggling with fountain pens, bottles of ink and pestering Mum for the correct type of nib from Derbyshires shop in the village. Then in my final year we all seemed to use dip pens and ink dispensed from big bottles into our own inkwell set in the desk.
We weren't allowed out to play during the snowy winter of '63, all that good snow untouched on the playgrounds which were criss-crossed by 'paths' dug out by Mr Massam the caretaker.
The teachers: reception, lovely Mrs Dolan, whose class shared a large long room, separated by a screen from Miss Marsh (a bit scary) then the dreaded Miss Dunn (terrifying). In the juniors there was Mrs Greene, Sister Teresa, Miss Kinsella and Mr Rogan. I remember Mr Dolan and Mrs Formby also but I wasn't taught by them. Sister Marie Joseph was the Head who dolled out whacks with her cane.
Sports: rounders in the yard, throwing beanbags, skipping. There was always a bit of a scramble to get a decent sized rope. We went swimming with Mr Rogan at Hatton Hill school baths in Litherland.
Happy memories of a school that seemed lost in time, certainly not part of the swinging sixties!

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