Elmshott Lane Junior School

A Memory of Cippenham.

My history predates yours by about 20 years. I went to the infants school first and then to the junior school where I passed the scholarship to Slough Grammar in 1944/5. I remember Mr Santer who caned me on the hand twice. Once for breaking a window of the dining room with a tennis ball during the first dinner sitting. My friend and I had been throwing the ball against the wall when one of us, I forget who, missed the wall and shattered the window. I can clearly remember the stunned silence in the dining room (assembly hall) as everyone stopped eating. The headmaster's window opened onto the playground and Mr Santer's head popped out and he summoned us both to his office.

The second incident relates to the tuck shop across the road from the school. My parents could never afford a sticky bun and I never ever bought one. There must have been a particularly bad batch of buns one day because several of them ended up being kicked around the playground. One came my way while I was playing football in the yard and I casually kicked it out of the way. Remember it was wartime and everything was rationed and when Mr Santer heard about this "gross waste of food" he sent a monitor round to each class to collect the names of anyone who had been seen kicking a bun in the playground. To my horror someone in my class vounteered my name and I had to join the lengthy queue outside Mr Santer's office and receive the mandatory whack on the hand. Is there no justice?

There used to be another sweet shop along the street from the tuck shop. It was a dark narrow room and could only accomodate a few children at a time. They sold "penny drinks" which were made from a flavoured tablet dissolved in fizzy soda water. You could also buy the flavoured tablet on its own which coated your tongue in a garish red or yellow stain. It still cost a penny, though.

I was useless at cricket but at the end of one summer term I found a cricket bat abandoned in the long grass at the far end of the sports field from the school buildings. As the school was closed I took it home and used it to play street cricket with my Westgate Crescent friends on the concrete service road which went from Aspro's playing field to the Berlie factory. The bat was almost wrecked because we played with it almost every day during the summer holidays but I had to take it back to school eventually. To disguise the abuse I borrowed some linseed oil and managed to repair some of the damage before binding the blade up with tape so that it "looked" better than when I found it. The sports master in charge of cricket was most impressed and made me form cricket captain for the afternoon - an honour I have never matched since! I did however win the school long jump and appeared briefly at the Distict Sports on a rainy evening but that is the sum total of my athletic progress!

My fondest memory of Cippenham School is Miss Widdington who was our class teacher and also taught us scripture. It may not be very fashionable to mention such things these days but I can remember, almost seventy years later, the things she taught me which have profoundly influenced my life for the better (the cricket bat incident excluded). My brother also had the priviledge of being taught by Miss Widdington and he speaks equally highly of this dedicated lady.

---

---