School and Play - Between the wars in Ipswich

School and Play – Between the wars in Ipswich

There is no faculty s fickle as memory. These days I often find it difficult to remember the name of someone I met last week. Yet I can remember, word for word, the first couple of verses of a poem that I learnt at the age of five in Springfield Infants School, Ipswich.

It was called 'The Snowflake'. No, it wasn't the well-known poem by Francis Thompson, but a banal piece of doggerel that I'd be only too happy to erase from my memory.

Apart for 'The Snowflake' there isn't a great deal that I can remember about that Infants' School. I have vague and somewhat menacing recollections of frightening noise and tumult in the playground, of a stern headmistress who strode down the classroom aisles with a ruler, to smack the bare legs of those who misbehaved, and an end-of-term Christmas party at which I was given a sugar mouse from the Christmas Tree – and thought that it tasted horrible!

About the Senior School catering for seven to fourteens (known as 'the big 'uns') my memories are more specific. Headmaster Mr Offord ('Pip' Offord to us) was a stern disciplinarian who wielded the cane with expertise. He was also an enthusiast for choral singing. To him, morning assemblies were another singing lesson. An enormous hymn sheet was suspended from the ceiling in the school hall and the hymns changed by mechanical means beyond my understanding. Many a time he would make us sing one or more verses of a hymn again and again until we reached an acceptable standard.

No doubt there were also prayers and a bible reading- but I don't remember them. I do recall his reading letters from 'Old Boys'. One that impressed itself upon me was from a naval rating who recorded a football match between the crew of his ship and a native team somewhere in the southern hemisphere. The natives played barefoot- and won!

Miss Dalliston (I may have spelt her name wrongly) taught me in the first year, Mrs Trod in the second and Miss Dunkley in the third. There was also a Mr Lowbridge (Old Lowbug') with a reputation for ferocity, but I was never in his class.

Mrs Trod, who had a biting and sarcastic tongue, was feared rather than loved. She prided herself on the control that she exercised over her class. One day, through the wall of our classroom, we could hear Mr Lowbridge shouting at the top of his voice to keep his class in order. 'I don't need to raise my voice', said Mrs Trod, quietly but with menace, 'to maintain discipline'; and she didn't!

Miss Dunkley was kind. Perhaps I was one of her 'favourites', because I was beginning to show an aptitude for English composition and an interest in history.

History was a subject we were never allowed to forget. On Empire Day (24^th May, Queen Victoria's birthday) we always had an outside speaker from Zululand or Labrador or Kashmir or some other outpost of the Empire, to inspire us with patriotic fervour. We also had to march round the playground and salute the flag- the Union Jack that was always flown on that auspicious day. Armistice Day (11^th November) when the school, like everyone else in the country, went into dead silence for two minutes when the sirens sounded at 11.00 a.m., was another day that punctuated the school year.

Boat Race Day was yet another. It is astonishing to recall the fervour with which those who had not the slightest association with either university supported one or the other team. We all wore light blue or dark blue favours! Since my family originated in Berkshire, the county adjoining Oxfordshire, we were among the minority 'dark blues' in East Anglia. It wasn't till my own son went to Cambridge in 1971 that I really changed my allegiance!

When I recall those days in the late '20s and early '30s, it is our leisure activities rather than our school work that first comes to mind. We all collected cigarette cards. Most adult males were cigarette smokers in those days and we would accost total strangers with the plea: 'Got any fag cards Mister?' and would, as often as not, get a positive response. I collected Kings and Queens of England, 1930 Cricketers, National Flags, Fresh Water Fish and Salt Water Fish. The last of these, carefully stuck in an album, proved to be an extraordinary useful guide to identification when, years later, I was studying for a qualification as a Food Inspector!

With spare cards and 'swaps', we played 'flicks' in the playground. I can't recall the rules but the basis of the game was to flick your card so that it covered that of your opponent. 'Flicks' and marbles were played all the year round. Other leisure activities were strictly seasonal. Conker fights were, of course, an autumn activity, and snowballing and 'slides' had to wait the advent of snow and ice. I don't know who decided that it was time to bring out whips and tops, or hoops, but suddenly tops or hoops would be in fashion and, for a few weeks, everybody had one.

Coming home from school we would listen to Children's Hour (Uncle Mac, Toy Town and an interminable list of Happy Birthdays, including a few 'Hello Twins!') on a crackly 'wireless set'. During the dark winter evenings we would read our comics (The Wizard, the Rover, the Hotspur and so on. They had, I remember, much more text and much less illustration than their equivalent today) or play card games– Happy families, Snap, Lexicon as well as games with court cards- and board games. Snakes and ladders and Ludo were both popular.

During the summer we would go on long walks or cycle rides at first with our parents and, as we grew older, with our friends. A popular summer evening's walk in my part of Ipswich was 'to gew t'Bramford and hoom b'Sproughton. The double 'o' in 'hoom' was, of course, pronounced as in 'foot'. Passage from Bramford to Sproughton might be made by road or – as we kids preferred – along the tow-path beside the River Gipping. Adult walkers would pause for refreshment at the Sproughton 'Wild Man' before setting off back to town. In those days the Sproughton to Ipswich Road was a quiet and peaceful rural highway- very different from the busy-with-traffic thoroughfare that it is today, with industrial estates pressing in on both sides!

A special treat was to go to 'the pictures'. My parents favoured Poole's Cinema in Tower Street. One reason for this was that I belonged to a 'Birthday Club' run by the Daily Sketch that permitted me to go in free, if wearing my membership badge and accompanied by a paying adult. The other reason was that it specialised in 'Western' films. My dad liked to think that he could have been a cowboy. Perhaps he could have been. He was certainly an expert horseman and possessed an illicit revolver (a souvenir of World War I). No doubt he would soon have learned to call it a 'six-shooter'! He knew quite a bit about cattle too, which was more than could be said for the screen cowboys.

They were silent films in those early days. Poole's remained a silent cinema long after the town's other cinemas had gone over to 'talkies'. Goodness knows how many times we watched Tom Mix or Buck Jones leap from a saloon balcony onto his trusty steed and gallop off to save the heroine from 'a fate worse that death'! There was always a serial too. Each episode invariably ended in a desperate situation; the hero about to be scalped by hostile Indians or the heroine clinging to a cliff edge (hence 'cliff-hanger') with a raging sea below. This was, of course, to persuade you to come along next week to see how he or she escaped – as we all knew they would!

As I grew older I went to 'the pictures' on my own or with friends. We went on our bikes and left them, unlocked, outside the cinema without considering for a moment that they might be stolen. Nor were they. Most cinemas in those days put on a three-hour programme. As well as the main film there would be a supporting film, a news reel and a cartoon (Felix the cat and Bonzo the dog had their fans long before Micky Mouse appeared on the scene). My not-always-reliable memory tells me that 'the serial' disappeared at about the same time that 'talkies' came in. There might also be an organ recital. At Ipswich's Regent Cinema an important and well-advertised feature of each programme was 'Andreas at the mighty Wurlitzer'.

Film programmes were continuous. If you came into a cinema half-way through a film you could, if you wished, leave when you reached the appropriate moment next time round ('This is where I came in') or, if the film was very good, you might sit right through it again to the end. God save the King was always played at the end of the final performance each evening. It must be said though that, even in those rather-more-patriotic days, there was a rush for the exits with the opening chords!

Films were classified as either U or A. U films were considered suitable for everybody but A films could be watched by children only if they were accompanied by an adult. If my friends and I particularly wanted to watch an A film, and couldn't persuade our parents to take us, we would hang around near the cinema entrance until a friendly looking adult appeared and then ask – very politely – if they would mind if we accompanied them. More often than not they would agree. I don't think that our young minds were likely to have been seriously corrupted by films that, in the 1930s, were considered 'rather risqué'!

During the summer there were occasional trips to the seaside. I remember day excursion return tickets from Ipswich to Felixstowe costing only 10d (about 4.5p) per adult. Felixstowe was, of course, within cycling distance of Ipswich. So was Shotley. My parents and I- and later my friends and I- would cycle to Shotley, leave our bikes (unlocked of course) in the yard of a local pub and take the ferry that then plied between Shotley and Harwich, for a day out in Dovercourt.

There were also paddle-steamer trips from Ipswich, down the Orwell, to Felixstowe and Clacton-on-Sea. The steamer put in at the end of Clacton pier to give passengers, I think, three hours ashore. I remember in 1931, as a 10 year old, taking a swim in the icy water of the recently opened 'swimming pool above the waves' on the pier at that time. During the outward and homeward trips we children liked to go down into the engine room, noisy and smelling of oil, to see the mighty pistons driving the paddle wheels.

It is strange how memories of summer holidays in childhood are of a succession of warm, sunny days and cloudless skies. Leaden skies, driving rain and bitter north-east winds, which surely must have plagued us then as now, are totally forgotten!

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