Shelsley Beauchamp School 1942 1945

A Memory of Shelsley Walsh.

When my parents, my sister Maureen and I moved from Edgbaston, Birmingham to live with my paternal grandparents Harriet and Samual Cook at the General Store, New Mill Bridge, I had to attend school. My sister was not old enough to start school at the time but did so later. The nearest school was the one at Shelsley Beauchamp some 3/4 of a mile from the house we were living in. It was a decent walk each day and because most students lived as far away from the school as I did, too far to walk home and back again in the short lunch break allowed, we were obliged to have "School Dinners" at the cost of about 1 shilling per week. It may have been a little more than this but if so I cannot remember the amount. It was as the result of one of these dinners making me feel ill [the meat was off] that I became a vegetarian and have remained so for the rest of my life. The school had three teachers, the headmaster Mr Hedges who lived in the handsome house next to the school and who taught the senior students, Miss Daniels who lived on the Abberly to Stanford Road who taught the junior students and Mrs Tyler who, with her daughter Daphne, cycled into school each day from the bungalows near to the General Store run by Mrs Grosvenor on the Stanford - Shelsley Walsh Road. Mrs Tyler taught the infant students. It was into Miss Tylers class that I first began my time at Shelsley school. The school rooms numberd just two. One room opened off the main part of the building and this was the room used by the Infants. The main room was shared by the Seniors and the Juniors. It could be partitioned into two sections by drawing across a heavy curtain thereby seperating the Juniors from the Seniors. There was a seperate cloakroom and two playgrounds, one for the boys and the other for the girls. These were seperated by a brick wall. Mr Hedges always wore riding britches and long socks, he was what we called "wall eyed" in that one eye was a different colour from the other. It is possible that one of the eyes was false. He was a kindly man and seemed to know the Christian names of all of the students in the school, even those who came on a temporary basis during the fruit picking season. The long school holidays coincided with the hop picking season, if I remember correctly. Miss Daniels was a very nice old school marm type of lady who always dressed impeccably and spoke in a very cultured manner. Mrs Tyler I cannot remember to any great depth. Shortly before the end of the war and my family's subsequent return to Birmingham, Miss Daniels retired and was replaced by a Miss Toombs. I was not at school very long after Miss Toombs arrived. When I re-visited Britain and Shelsley in 1992, I learned that the school had been closed and was now a private residence.

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