Part 10

A Memory of Middle Rainton.

And the upper floor as the church for worship. This remained like this until approx 1880 when the old primary school was built. (This is now demolished and turned into a housing estate). Between the junior and senior school playground was a wooden building known by all as The Hut. It was painted green and was getting a bit dated. I suppose it had been used by the church for social events at one time.
The upper section contained a good snooker table, and the lower section a concert hall with stage, and was heated by oil stoves. This hall was used by the school for plays and other events and was big enough to hold all the children with parents.
I remember on the outside facing the church, was a section of German bomber from the war, about 5 Ft square, painted grey with a large Luftwaffe cross. We were told it came from a plane that crashed nearby.
I attended the old school from 1945 until 1955; I was a bright pupil and generally did well in exams but when it came to sit the 11+, I purposely messed up the entire paper, for which I was duly punished.
The problem as I saw it was, if I passed I would then have to attend school in Sunderland, this being the nearest Catholic high school. This would mean quite a journey by bus for me, and I had no intention of getting myself into this.
Being a catholic school we were taught religion every morning for one hour and had to be able to recite the catechism from memory, or punished. Punishment was the norm, talk, or mess about in the classroom and you were caned, do it again and you got more caning, and then sent to the head master Mr Carling for another dose. You DID NOT say anything about this when you got home, as you were told you must have done something wrong to get the cane and given more punishment. I must admit it did me no harm at all, and when I look at the lack of discipline and respect in today’s classrooms, I think it has gone wrong somewhere.
Church and school were part of the same team so to speak, the school was next to the church, we all attended both and were on good terms with both the parish priest and our teachers. We were given a good general education on all the main subjects. We had a good woodwork classroom for the boys, and a large kitchen for the girls and had a large garden, where we were taught to grow vegetables, not very successfully I must admit. We were also given lessons is basic car mechanics, to improve our prospects of work; cars were always breaking down and being repaired then and there were many garages to carry out this work.
We did all the usual sports; football, netball, cricket, rounders, etc;

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