The Tin School Belmont

Hi Martin
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 can vaguely recall the playing field but have more memories of the playground. At the time I went there we lived in St Marys Road, Belmont, our house backed onto the cemetery o0r graveyard.

I lived in Kepier Crescent, at the time I went to the Tin School and moved on to Gilesgate New (unsure if that was when The Tin School closed) it was just at the top of the street from where I lived. Think I know where you lived there are two cemeteries in Belmont, Carrville, Broomside area and I believe that as you describe it as backing onto it, it might be the graveyard of St Mary Magadelan. I new a father and son from that area called Storey the fathers name was Freddy but can't recall the son's name.

Hi Martin and all

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.

My mother, who is now 91 attended the tin school from 1932 to 1939 when she moved to Durham girl's grammar school with her friend Hazel. My mother's main memory is of the nit nurse but Hazel recalls that there was a curtain between 2 of the classes and when her own maths lesson was dull she would listen to the geography lesson on the other side of the curtain. .My grandparents lived next door but one to the co-op which later became a garage. There were 4 bungalows in a row and sadly they were all demolished to make way for the brewery warehouse.

Hi my dad when to the tin school, he will be turning 60 soon and my sister and I would let to trace anyone that may have known him and would have any story of his time there his name was Jim Layfield and he had an older brother called Kevin Layfield