Walton Secondary Modern School For Boys Ambleside Avenue

I was at Ambleside from about 1955 until 1960. My teachers then were Mr. Hamlett, Mr Griffiths, Mr Taylor, Mr Sibald and Mr .Croft Our Art Master was Mr. "noddy" Skinner Anybody remember me?? Malcolm Bates

I was at Ambleside about the same time. I remember we did several "operettas" - one about Hiawatha or "The Storm Fool" in which I played Minnehaha, and one about Huckleberry Finn in which I played Aunt Polly. I still have a photo of me as Minnehaha along with the boy who played Hiawatha.

Many thanks for both your replies. I fear I have to confess my envy of your younger years [🎻🌝!] given my turn of stay began in 1944 lasting until 1948.
The Headmaster for this whole period was a Mr Willcox about to retire a year or two later with either Mr Garfield Jones - English master or Mr Thomas to take over and I believe it was the latter succeeded. One name of your selection Malcom is familiar and he is Mr Sibald relatively new and probably immediately after the war had ended and he took a classes for Religious Studies. Our League of Nations Mandate for Palestine had become very hard for us to administer given the many hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who had been freed from German concentration camps and organised in principle by the Allied Forces Admin. as Displaced Persons Programme but could not restrain the understandable impatience of so many who wished to reach Palestine. Mr Sibald tried his best to explain all this and set us a composition for us to give our opinions as to how the problem of peaceful administration of in effect The Holy Land could be achieved. Far too beyond our fourteen year old minds I soon told myself. In retrospect, a sad period with the newspaper advertisements calling for volonteers to enlist for the Palestine Army Police Force or whatever its proper name and the assassinations of good men by the warring factions like the Irgun, and Stern Gang. Other excitements included teachers arriving on their bicycles and giving these to pupils near entrance to park them in the racks and unpopular teacher finding no one available and having to wheel his bike to the racks himself (!); national coal shortage brought school closure a few times in cold winters ie classrooms too cold; bombs falling on Blake’s furniture store in Church Street/Terrace Road; experience of a V1 bomb seen approaching with no warning siren: panic mad dash to shelters in sports field, bomb passed overhead towards Apps Court; bomb fell direct hit on fish and chip restaurant opposite The Bear public house, a number of bombs falling on Oatlands Park village Shrove Tuesday (pancake night!) 1944; and unannounced ie no warning air raid sirens raid on Vickers Weybridge September 1940…

remember

I was also at Ambleside Secondary School from 1955 to leaving on the 19th December 1958.
I think I can remember a John Whitehead at Hersham juniors school who was about a foot taller than me.
Can anyone remember the school trip to Austria in May 1958.
It was Thursday May 22nd when about 24 pupils and two teachers Mr Taylor and Mr Hendrickson set off in the morning from Walton station to Waterloo.
The second stage of the trip is Victoria station to Folkestone where we catch the the ferry to Calais.
We arrive in Calais at about 6pm, we have now been travelling about eight hours.
Stage three we catch the train from Calais to Basel Switzerland, we arrive at
5.30am where we have breakfast.
Stage four we depart Basel at 7am to Buchs another three hour trip and then
on to Arlberg.
The last stage is Arlberg to Ozthal by coach and we finally arrive at our destination on the 23rd May at about 1.30pm a total of about 27 hours, today
you would get to Australia quicker.
The next day the 24th we have a free day i think most of us spent it sleeping.
Our hotel was the Pension Jäger which was about a ten minute walk to the small town of Otz and is still in operation today.
The hotel was fairly basic with a shared bathroom but it was 1958, we were
paired off in two in a room, I shared with Roger Reeves.
We had a full day to Obergurgl the highest village in Europe, one of the boys
found one ski on the slopes and he took it all the way home.
We also had trips to Innsbruck and St Moritz and tours to Imat,Fern and Flaxen.
it was a great experience for us thirteen and fourteen year olds and one not to
be forgotten.
We now have to face the returning trip home just another 27 hours.
I remember on arriving at Walton station everyone was a sleep, the teachers
were shaking us to wake up, it was a bit of a scramble to get off the train to meet our waiting parents.

Dennis Redman