Grange School And Onwards

c1960
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My name is Andy Pearce and I was born in New Haw in 1952. I went to Grange School in 1957. Names I remember are Jenkins, Wright, Hatch, Swanton, Gill, Watts. Many more faces than surnames.Was a paperboy at Flanagans on Woodham Road and belonged to the Cubs that met at Grange School and the Scouts that had an old Nissan hut down by the canal, next to the rec. Friends were Richard Jenkins, Olivia Philipson, Mary Rowlands. Great times for kids, biking through the fields to Rowtown, playing along and in the Bourne. I recall my first day at school, kicking over some skittles in the classroom with another boy, Robert something (also in the cubs). We both got a ruler across our legs from the teacher. Used to love roller skating down the Grange Road hill, from Manor Road to Job's dairy, which was almost opposite our house. We used to play in their yard in the evenings. The skating memory reminds me that there was a lovely girl who lived in one of the bungalows at the top of the hill, her name was Linda Wade if my memory serves me correctly. These were the end of the days of the bicycle tradesman, I recall men selling bread, watercress, fish and pies from their bikes, announcing their arrival with the ringing of a hand bell. The winter of 1961 brings memories of trudging through the snow, pulling a sledge with a five gallon can on it to get paraffin from a machine outside the grocers on Woodham Road. I went to Fullbrook, from where I remember many names, Mathews, Frampton, Redmond, Ely, Uhlig Pink. I found, after leaving and moving to Ipswich in 1966, that this had not been a good school. The system in Suffolk allowed me to take O levels, whereas the Surrey system had not allowed for any exams for those in their lower streams. I trust that this has now changed, as I see that it is now a specialist IT school. All in all the memories I retain of New Haw are happy ones, they were perhaps the last of the 'innocent' years. Times when we expected little and generally had our expectations fulfilled. I am now a retired lecturer and avid allotmenteer.