The Tin School Belmont
A Memory of Durham.
Does anyone reacll the 'Tin School'? It was a primary school situated in Belmont, I went there in the early 1960's as we lived in Belmont. I recall the school was made of possibly corrugated iron and was on a crossroads or junction. Our family lived at various places around County Durham until 1966 when we moved South due to my dads job. I am now aged 54yrs and live live in Essex UK. Be interested to hear from anyone from the early 1960's who went to the 'Tin School'.
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I went to " The Tin School" I seem to remember it being very Victorian in style wooden desks and forms. You are right in saying it was completely covered in corrugated iron. It stood on a T junction the main road through Gilesgate Moor and a turn towards Dragonville. I played for its football team for awhile if you can recall the sports field/football pitch had quite a slope to it. Anyway the site is now a garage/car showroom.
I started at the tin school in Autumn 1942. I thought the school was great. From the small front playground where we lined up before being told to lead on into school you entered a cloakroom with long wooden racks with hooks for coats and hats. From there you went into a large infants’ school hall. On the far side of the hall were the Standard 1to 3 classrooms. I imagine that there was another such hall for the junior school to the left of ours but I never made it that far as a few months after the war ended my father got a job in the Midlands and we moved away
Our hall was a magical place with a pleasant smell, presumably of floor polish. I was impressed by the blackboard in the corner of the hall It had a wheeled wooden frame with two uprights supporting a double-sided blackboard pivoted half way up so that it could be rotated to show the sides in turn. For the Christmas nativity play the board was rotated to a flat position to form the roof of the stable. We were small enough to fit under it.
My Standard 1 classroom had wooden desks with flat tops with grooves forming a small chessboard for which we were given small sea shells to help our counting. Writing was with a slate pencil on a wood-framed slate. We also had coloured crayons for which there was a pencil/crayon sharpener at the front of the class. You put in and held the crayon at one side and turned the handle on the other side to do the sharpening. Magic!
The loos were at the left hand side of the rear playground with a urinal section and toilet cubicles with full height doors The cubicles were known as the fever lavatories (with an awful smell to match) and you did your best never to use them. If you needed to go you held it in until you got home.