Seasons : Junior 1. Walhouse School

A Memory of Cannock.

Here's another set of memories about Walhose Junior School as I promised.

In 1955, I moved from John Wood C of E Infants up to the Church of England's own junior school which was located on the New Penkride Road. I was duly scrubbed and dressed in my new school uniform John Wood's had been grey and some blue - Walhouse's decidedly green with braiding to the edges and pocket tops of our jackets. In keeping with those times, we wore short trousers which were grey.

Frank Craddock was to be my class or form teacher. He seemed to me to be a tall, large framed, slightly bent over man of considerable age. A kindly man he rarely raised his voice and to my delight, he was artistic, a particular interest of mine.

His classroom was to the left of the house which divided the boys' school from the girls. It still stands there but is now a private dwelling. The range of buildings were the original school built in 1828, a date prominently displayed over the main door of the centre section.

It was a large room with metal framed, small paned, pointed Gothic windows and numerous iron-framed desks with tip-up seats each capable of accommodating two children. Two lockers with hinged access formed the body and the top of the desk : a standard pattern for decades. The ceilings were very high which was fine for most of the year but in the winter it was very cold.

What heating there was was from a pot-bellied cast iron stove located just inside the classroom door. This was surrounded by a simple iron railing fireguard to keep us boys safely distant. A huge coal scuttle adorned the hearth and a series of iron pokers and other tool completed the ensemble.

On a wet morning, Mr. C.'s mac would be draped over the rail to dry. It would steam gently there for most of the morning. He even had 'coat monitors' to place the garment appropriately.

Mr. Craddock's desk was placed a few feet away from this source of considerable heat. My desk was at the very back of the room adjacent to one of the windows, Alaskan cold, remote.

But it wasn't all bad! One really cold morning, I devised an interesting diversion for myself as the lessons droned on delivered from the chipped blackboard which stood on a somewhat rickety easel at the front. I discovered that there was a film of ice on the inside of the window panes which had formed into most interesting patterns. By breathing closely and heavily on them, these fern-like fronds melted for a moment or two and then reformed, racing their way across the glass. Some even looked like old-fashioned marbling which I'd marvelled at on the inside covers of ancient books. No human hand could possibly have produced anything like either of these designs.

Into the Spring, we resumed our occasional 'Nature Walks' over Shoal Hill. Fresh air and sunshine: nice and the days quite exciting. We'd gather all sorts of detritus, twigs, leaves, curious pebbles and all manner of things which caught a child's eye. These trophies were duly marvelled at and carried back to school to be added to our ever growing Nature Table.

After one such expedition, Mr. Craddock decided that an art lesson was called for. The subject: leaves. We diligently copied the shapes of the leaves we had collected onto pieces of coarse white paper using pencil. Once having shown these efforts to 'Sir' we were allowed to colour them in using paint!

The paint was water based. It arrived at the school in boxes and was always a powder. It was the task of 'Paint Monitors' - yes, there were monitors for nearly everything that had to be done - to dole out several mounds of garish-coloured powder into each boy's six compartment, tin paint tray. Jam jars were filled with water, (by the water jar monitors, naturally), and distributed with hogs hair paintbrushes to each desk. Each boy had then to mix the powder and water to form that glorious stuff ; liquid paint.

Oh how idyllic is all sounds now. In reality, it was a recipe for numerous disasters. Jam jars would be tipped over by a desk lid being raised, a child forgetting where the water jar stood. The powder was distributed far and wide like an Indian carnival covering the desktops, the seats, the floor and the children and their clothing.

The powder generally refused to mix with the water causing extreme childish frustration at the few droplets that did appear in the trays and there resolutely refuse to be picked up by the stiff bristles of the brushes in order to be applied to the awaiting masterpieces!

We made the best of it all. Mr. Craddock kept his cool and mumbled vague praises at our lurid and smudged efforts. Many a parent was probably far more vocal at the state of our uniforms when we arrived home!