Miss Hindle remembers
Mary Hindle taught at Spring Hill for forty years – from 1936 to 1976. Along with her colleague, and lifelong friend, Muriel Sutcliffe she related some of her memories of the early days.
Before the Second World War the school had a very formal teaching regime. The children, aged 7 to 14 years, were seated in very old desks screwed in rows to the floor. Most of the teachers were single women as at this time women who married had to leave teaching. The teachers wrote on small blackboards, which she remembers as being very high up. A small, narrow raised box ran along the front of the board that the teacher taught from in a rather precarious way.
The teachers desk was tall and lectern-like giving a rather Dickensian appearance. She was rather frightened of the headmaster Mr Barrett when she first started at Spring Hill.
There were no school dinners1 provided and Miss Hindle remembers that on occasions she would walk home to Spencer Street - across town – and back (sometimes running) during the dinner break -1 ½ hours in those days. There was no school secretary so all paperwork was done by the teachers including collecting monies each week for the Yorkshire Penny Bank.
The older boys did gardening. There were two classrooms in the extension at the back of the school for the ‘senior’ pupils aged 12 –14. The boys were taught separately in the upstairs room and the girls downstairs.
During the War years school dinners1 started. The infants came up each dinnertime to eat with the juniors. It was at this time that there was an opportunity for the two staffs to meet – on the whole they did not associate with each other. The school dinners were 5d per day 2/1 per week – again collected by each class teacher.
Air raid shelters were built in the school garden where vegetables were grown for the war effort. The boys had another garden somewhere near school and the produce was sold.
The ladies particularly remember their ‘fire watching’ duties. By rota, two of the women staff slept in the staff room on camp beds. (There were no male staff during the war) The bedding was shared and it was on one watch night that Miss Hindle and a colleague encountered visitors in the form of fleas! They were to watch for incendiary bombs and were equipped with stirrup pump and bucket should a bomb drop on the school. They were told that they should climb through a hatch in the kitchen ceiling then up a vertical ladder on the outside of the school to the roof. There they were to pump water from the bucket onto the fire. The prospect of climbing through the hatch was daunting enough – especially as one of the other staff was more amply proportioned. How much water would be left in the bucket after the climb up the ladder was a matter of debate. Fortunately the enemy never put the ladies to the test.
In 1940 there was a very heavy snowstorm – such as we do not see now. One Monday morning they woke up to find snow up to the bedroom windows. Small tunnels ran out from each house. Miss Hindle struggled in to school from Spencer Street and Miss Sutcliffe from Harcourt Road. They walked on wall tops, through drifts and dug their way to Spring Hill. Mr Spencer, the Headmaster, was there but very few children. The school was closed for a week.
There are memories of the double summer time, which operated in Wartime. It was dark going to school in the morning and light at midnight in summer.
After the War new furniture arrived – desks chairs and blackboards. The teaching became less formal and in 1947 the school became a Junior school (7-11 years) There was a shortage of teachers and married women and one year trained teachers (emergency trained) were employed.
There were recorder classes and concerts and carol services were given for parents and friends.
Miss Hindle especially remembers the school newspapers she organised which were written and arranged by the children. There were nature groups and free dancing and music groups.
From her beginning as a young teacher of nineteen in 1936 Miss Hindle had seen the school change from an old fashioned, rather formal school only just converted from gas lighting to electric light to the modern school it was in 1976. She saw the introduction of the telephone, schools radio programmes, the tape recorder and school television programmes as technology, and changes in teaching, moved on through the twentieth century.