Infant School

A Memory of Southwell.

The Methodist infant school's headmaster was George Topliss, my teacher was Mrs Cresswell. The school is now a private house. There were only three classes, infants, juniors and seniors. If you did not pass the 11+ you stayed until 14-15 years and then went to work. In the juniors was an ogre of a teacher, really strict and who spat when getting cross. Getting to Mr Topliss's class was the aim, he was lovely, or when Miss Hallam left, even better, getting into Mr Bushells class, it broke my heart when he got married! I still remember most of the names of those in my class. We all lived locally. In the winter our milk froze. Our toilets were at the bottom of the playground. All the teachers were in school, the caretaker lived in caretaker's house in the school grounds and never failed to have a warm school for us, the infants class had an open log/coal fire which heated the boiler/radiators, none of the school was harmed, no health & safety in those days! A lot of us walked through snow as high as the hedgerows up the Ropewalk, all the buses made every effort to run, not like these days of a few snowflakes and everything stops. As children we played marbles, cigarette cards, football card swaps, rollerskating and energetic games, we could play safely and all days without fear, and there were no telephones or computors, we occupied ourselves all summer long and thought out our own games etc without getting into serious trouble.

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