St John's C Of E Primary School

A Memory of West Hendon.

I attended St John's from 1952 to 1959. This was an all girl's church school with about 60 children in three classrooms, with a hall where we had dinner and danced to the BBC's "Music and Movement". We used another hall across the road for our PE lessons. To start with I was in the infant's classroom at the front of the school where we used to have a nap in the afternoon after listening to "Listen with Mother" - can't imagine 5 year old's having a little nap in the afternoon these days! When I was 9 I moved to the top class with Miss Richards. We had gas lighting and an open fire. The windows were high up in the wall and the walls were painted green at the bottom and yellow at the top. Our desks had ink wells and we wrote with pens with detachable nibs. There was an ink monitor and a milk monitor. The milk monitor had the fun job of piercing the milk bottle tops with a knitting needle. Our morning milk came in a third of a pint bottle. In freezing weather it was put by the fire to thaw out. Unfortunately those bottles nearest the fire were half boiled and tasted awful. Our sewing lessons included darning socks and sewing on buttons. On Friday afternoons we put our heads down on the desk and listened to 78rpm records of Peter and the Wolf or poems like Under Milkwood and Macavity the Mystery cat. We had nature walks, around the Welsh Harp I think, collecting twigs and berries. I remember a lady giving us a slide show in the hall across the road of her holiday in South Africa - I was very impressed by Table Mountain! Our dinner was delivered in large aluminium canisters. It was mostly inedible! I used to tuck bits of food I couldn't eat into my blouse pocket under my gym slip! The toilets were in the small playground at the back of the school. They were absolutely freezing in the winter! The playground was surrounded by high buildings - the flats above the shops on the Broadway. The playground was tarmacked and had a climbing frame in the middle - no soft landing for us if we fell! We played games with hula hoops, jacks, five stones and balls. Next door to the school was a dairy - I'm sure there were horses stabled there. Our parents had to drop us off at the school door - no parents allowed on school premises then. After a few weeks at school, we were taken to school by older children in our street. In fact parents rarely took us anywhere, it was always an older girl from our street who took you to school, dancing class, brownies, etc. We also belonged to a Girl's Club which Miss Richards ran, together with Douglas Martin a local estate agent I think. We once had an outing when we were taken by train to see the Peter Pan statue in Kensington and another time we were taken to see the film Scott of the Antarctica at the cinema in Hendon Central. I don't think any of us were too sure what it was about! Every Monday morning we lined up to pay a shilling to get a savings stamp which had a picture on it of either Prince Charles or Princess Anne. I don't remember what we did with the money we saved. We also used to buy a copy of the Children's Newspaper which I think was printed by the Church of England. We attended St John's Church in Algernon Road fairly regularly. Our sports day was held in York Park at the bottom of the road. I remember feeling very self conscious of walking about in my navy-blue knickers and vest! When we got into the top class our playtime was held in the playground of the hall across the road. There were brick built air raid shelters there where the school sheltered during the war. We always wondered what they were like inside! The two main classrooms were separated by a partition that could be folded back. I think I remember this being folded back for a carol concert or something. Our days always started with prayers, then the times tables said out loud, then spelling tests. We were in age groups - there were four in my group - and were called out to the blackboard to be shown a new lesson. Our group was the last to sit the horrible 11+. We all went on to St Mary's in Hendon. We had exams at the end of each term - together with a school report each term too! They were green and folded out with each term's results on a different page, so your parents could see how you progressed. I'm afraid to say there was a lot of snobbery on behalf of the teacher's in those days. They only helped those girls whose father had a "white collar" job. Mine was a French Polisher and cabinet maker - not good enough! There was no real corporal punishment, except for a very sharp slap on the leg which could hurt just a much as a ruler! Our uniform was a black gym slip with a blue belt which you tied like a necktie. Our tie was blue and black stripes. I don't remember a blazer. In the summer we wore blue gingham check dresses. Looking back 60 years, I realise our school was almost like a little Victorian country school stuck in the middle of a busy London suburb. It was demolished together with the surrounding old Victorian roads for the new flats. The end of an era!