Living In Queens Avenue And Going To School

A Memory of Muswell Hill.

I was three when we moved to Muswell Hill in 1951. My parents had both been in the forces and it was difficult to find accommodation for a family. My grandmother knew a Mr. Wood, he was a judge. His son and daugther-in-law had recently moved into their own home and Mr. Woods wife was dead. He was apparently in need of a live in housekeeper and part-time handy man and offered the position to my parents. As a child, it was an amazing house to grow up in- a double fronted Victorian house with an inner glass set of doors and a stone flagged hall. The house was originally staffed with servants and so each room had a bell push or pull. In the kitchen above the built in dresser the bells for each room were labelled and still in working order. If I was ever ill in bed, all I had to do was press my bell to let my mum know I needed her! Mr Wood was a man who had travelled extensively abroad and one of his two drawing rooms held his treasures. I was allowed to go and look at them and sometimes he told me about them. On the middle landing up stairs there was a full length window in stained glass, the subject was an angel. I remember sitting in front of her and talking to her sometimes when I was a small child.
In 1953 I went to St. James Primary School, a 5 minute walk away in Fortis Green Road. It was an old Victorian building with outside toilets! Winters were a bit hard!!! I have mixed memories of my time there- I was smacked for singing too loud in assembly at the age of five- I loved to sing and couldn't understand what I had done wrong. I hated the daily having to read aloud in front of everyone else- silly really because I have always been an avid reader ( to myself). We re-enacted the Peasant's Revolt in the school hall and our Watt Tyler famously shouted 'Open the gates, I'm revolting!' All of us roared with laughter including our teacher. In my last year there the girls made skirts with coloured piping finish which we wore to do country dancing at the May Day Joint Schools celebration down in Hornsey park, I think. I also remember an eclipse of the sun in my early years there. We were told to bring an old negative to school to look through. At the appointed time the whole school went into the playground where each class had a galvanised bath with water in it- we could look into this if we wanted to, to watch the eclipse or use our negatives. In our last year our class put on a production of a play called the Highwayman- I had the part of his mother!
Our head was a musician and the school had a reputation for having a good choir. I think some of the happiest times I spent at the school, in later years was as part of that choir. One last memory is of a painting that hung in the school hall, it was of a man with a horse drawn plough, ploughing a field with birds flying up around him. It seemed very appropriate to sing 'We Plough the Fields and Scatter' in that hall.