Brampton Road Primary School

A Memory of Bexleyheath.

I began my school days during the 1950's at Brampton Road Primary School, Bexleyheath. My over-riding memory is a time of innocence, wonder and happiness, where we were given freedom to learn and be creative in a supportive environment. Days of innocence indeed,
The girls wore blue gingham dresses with white collars and sleeve cuffs.The boys wore short trousers and V-necked jumpers over white shirts. Only a few of us bothered to wear the official school uniform blazers. During the first three Infants years we seemed to spend all day playing, drawing, painting, modelling in crafts and making music With the help of Janet and John books we learned to read and write. Whenever we were given exercises, the teacher would take away our books overnight and return them next day marked with little coloured stick-on stars - yellow the lowest grade, then rising higher with green, blue, red and silver - with a gold star awarded for the highest achievement. To this day I can remember the excitement on opening my exercise book each time to discover which star I'd been given.
We made music with recorders, triangles and tambourines, the backing percussion made by knocking together two halves of a coconut. And there were favourite songs; Ten Green Bottles, Old MacDonald Had A Farm, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Pop Goes The Weasel, Mary Had A Little Lamb, Waltzing Matilda, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, The Happy Wanderer, Green Grow the Rushes O, There Was A Crooked Man,Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I'm H.A.P.P.Y.,The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round, Boys and Girls Come Out to Play, Skye Boat Song, Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, One Man Went To Mow, There's A Hole In My Bucket Dear Liza, If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands, This Old Man (Nick-Knack Paddy Whack) and Pia Pia Piano. There was also London's Burning and Frere Jacques, sung in canon which was great fun. At first in our music lessons we sung do - re - mi, then attempted to learn how to read and write musical notation - crotchets, quavers and minims - with varying degrees of success!
Then there was Hiawatha! - 'By the shore of Gitchie Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water etc.' What fun it was for us to recite in class Longfellow's famous poem to the rythmn of native American Indian chanting.
In the assembly hall we played organised games, often with big bean bags we could tumble around on, and once in a while, there was country dancing. Crafts in class included making animals and figures from pipe cleaners, plasticine and paper mache. We constructed paper Chinese lanterns and fans, created pictures from coloured felt or beads, and made table mats woven from raffia. We also did French knitting using wooden cotton reels - having nails knocked in around the circumference at one end - the wool being woven around the nails and the knitting pulled through and out the other end of the reel. During the summer term we built miniature gardens in wooden seed trays incorporating stones, gravel or pieces of slate for the paths, and twigs and matchsticks to build little sheds. We used mirrors or silver paper for the ponds and wild flowers for the floral beds and borders - the best gardens entered in the annual Danson Park Horticultural Show.
One thing I remember even to this day were the evocative smells in the classroom: the sweet smell of the teacher's chalk; the smell of plasticine; the smell of Winsor and Newton powder paint; the smell of white sticky glue - Gripfix I think it was called - having the aroma of almonds. Then there was the smell of Quink, the only ink you could buy for fountain pens that began to appear in the last couple of years at school. And of course, the unforgettable aroma of free milk handed out in one-third pint bottles daily to every child.
During morning and afternoon breaks and lunchtime, we played with marbles around the classroom floor or outside in the playground. In those days there was a great variety to be had, ranging from small ordinary glass marbles, to those much larger made of special glass or actual marble. The most treasured were steel ball-bearings. To win one of these, especially the biggest, was the ultimate prize. Some girls would pair up and do 'cat's cradle', the making of string figures using a continuous loop of string stretched over two pairs of hands. Some of the shapes created were intricate and clever. Also popular was constructing origami fortune teller toys, with names or favourite things written on the various sides and manipulated with fingers. Out in the playground we played 'he' (you're 'It') sometimes known as tigg. Very popular was a hand game using fists called 'one potato, two potato, three potato, four,' and also 'eeny, meeny, miny, mo'. There was also Fivestones (otherwise known as Knucklebones and Jackstones) where five small objects such as acorns, pebbles or dice were thrown up and caught in various ways. Girls played netball, hop-scotch, or skipped in twos and threes with wooden-handled skipping ropes. Later on there were hoola-hoops which became all the rage. The boys played with Dinky and Matchbox toys, especially toy racing cars in red, blue and green. Always popular was making and flying paper aeroplanes in the classroom. Outside, boys flew homemade balsa wood aircraft powered by elastic bands. Some were fortunate to own planes fitted with miniature engines that ran on methylated spirits, started by flicking round the propellers. On the playing field we played leapfrog, had piggyback fights, did handstands and cartwheels, made daisy chains, and tried to prophecy who would be our boyfriend or girlfriend by blowing dandelion clocks while reciting "she loves me, she loves me not". We hunted for hawk-moth caterpillars beneath privet hedges and Poplar and Lime trees. We also played ball games of infinite variety including football, rounders, netball, catch and French cricket.
Local shops indulged us with a glorious selection of sweets including big round gob-stoppers, flying saucers, bubble-gum, cough candy, Spangles, Opal Fruits, sherbet dabs, lemon drops, palma violets, love-hearts, Black Jacks, Trebor chews, licourice sticks, and Jamboree Bags (these filled with a motley assortment of little sweets). Another favourite was sticking our wet fingers in a packet of lemonade powder and sucking. At some point during Junior school someone brought in a so-called ginger beer 'plant.' This was a live yeast culture, similar to that used to make yoghurt, a little of which was added to sugar, powdered ginger and water and left to ferment overnight to produce ginger beer the following day. Eventually the culture got split and passed on until, eventually, half the class were making ginger beer. As I remember it was delicious.
One memorable occasion was the day a bumper size box was delivered to our teacher from the multi-national company Unilever. In those days big companies were more than happy to send education packs to schools regarding their products. In this case the box was a treasure chest of raw natural materials from around the world, used to make soaps, polishes and other basic household items.
Big events in the school calendar were Harvest Festival, the Christmas party, and Sports Day. For Harvest Festival we sung All Things Bright and Beautiful and We Plough the Seeds and Scatter in the school assembly. We also brought into the classroom lots of fruit and vegetables - no cans or packet food - having the appearance of a greengrocer shop. The produce was then auctioned among the pupils and the proceeds donated to charity. One activity relished at this time of the year was conkers. The game was mainly played among the boys, who would go to chestnut trees growing in Bostall Woods or Danson Park and take home the biggest to string up. Some boys cheated by lightly baking their conkers to make them extra hard.
Then on the last day of autumn term we had our Christmas party. Here the classroom was festooned with decorations - bunting, paper chains, masks, stars and streamers we had spent all week preparing. On the big day every child brought in party food. There was masses of sandwiches, pies, cakes, biscuits, jelly, blancmange and sweets, After eating we played games including blind-man's bluff, hide-and-seek, bobbing for apples, pass the parcel, musical chairs and stick-the-tail-on-the-donkey. And of course we sung our favourite carols. At the end of the day we went home happy and wonderfully stuffed.
Every so often we were treated to school trips to interesting places. One such location was Lullingstone Silk Farm, near Eynsford in Kent. There we were able to see the whole process of producing silk thread, from silk moth eggs and lava, through to the pupa stage. This trip resulted in silk moth caterpillars being reared in the classroom. They normally feed on Mulberry leaves, but as these were unavailable we fed them on lettuce leaves instead, which were just as good. Another memorable school trip was to Kew Gardens. It rained all day and we spent most of our time in the Botanical Museum and the great tropical glass house. Another time we all went to the cinema. This was the first occasion most of us had seen a proper film, in this case a documentary of the Queen's first Commonwealth tour, plus a Disney nature film. Double features were often screened in those days. Then there was our visit to Eltham Little Theatre in Wythfield Road, later called The Bob Hope Theatre. Exactly what we saw has slipped my mind but I do remember the journey there and the building. I also recall visits some of us made to a house on the main road, the home of a group of professional naturalists. Only a few of us boys went there, those obsessed by butterflies and moths, an area of specialist interest to the naturalists who worked there.
One beautiful summer day the whole class walked to Bostall Heath for a grand picnic. Close to the cricket pitch and bowling green was a small wood where we settled down in a grassy area among the trees to have lunch. After eating we played games and sang songs and had such a fun time. I have always loved that memorable location, how the sunlight filtered through the lush green summer leaves of the trees, a truly magical day.
The weather as seen from school could sometimes be dramatic. There was one day in Miss Loft's class where the sky went a dark grey outside and it began to snow. Soon huge flakes were coming down, as big as goose feathers. It snowed so heavily we were all sent home, otherwise we'd have been marooned at school. Unforgettable for different reasons was the day an incredible smog - a so-called peasouper - made leaving school and getting home a real challenge, exciting if it hadn't had such unhealthy consequences. The moment we walked out our classroom into the playground, visibility was next to zero - we literally couldn't see our hands in front of our faces. It took an eternity to feel our way across and down streets and locate our homes. Many pupils just got lost.
I suppose if I have to choose one event I loved the most at school it would have to be the school play, a production of The Pied Piper of Hamlyn. Words cannot adequately describe the sheer joy of evenings spent in rehearsal. Most exciting of all was the final dress rehearsal where we got to put on real stage make-up. My non-speaking role in the play was only that of a humble councillor, but I have never forgotten the thrill of opening night and our performance before a live audience.
Sports Day brought the summer term to an exciting end and sent us away for the long holiday happy as larks. Of the many events held that day, the three-legged race, sack race, egg and spoon race and obstacle race were great favourites. Best of all, though, was the tug-of-war, which sometimes went on for ages if both teams were evenly matched.
Of all the teachers at Brampton Road, one I have always remembered fondly is Miss Francis, our class teacher during the Junior years. But my favourite was the lovely Miss Loft. Once we had a visit from an outside teacher, a lovely old lady who entertained us with a flip-chart story of a cottage. It was surrounded by beautiful countryside that had gradually become built on until the cottage was part of a village, then a town, then the city. One day a big lorry came along and picked up the cottage and moved it back to the country. It was a simple story never forgotten.
During the last three years at Brampton in the Junior School, my fellow pupils included Christopher Metcalfe, Judith Hawkins, Ian Evans, Susan Brunning, Mary Fuller, Alan Whiting, Patricia Soar, John Haugh, Una Eustace, Peter Trigg, Audrey Petit, Graham Walder, Trudy Johnson, David Pawson, Valerie Brown, David Herrington, Wendy Coombes, Geoffrey Eastick, and Rosemary Dunn.
Yes, Brampton Road School certainly was a place of delight and wonder. Days of innocence indeed.